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Homes

Six new homes are being built! They can be detached, semi-detached or terraced houses. How many different combinations of these can you find?

Stairs

This challenge is to design different step arrangements, which must go along a distance of 6 on the steps and must end up at 6 high.

Train Carriages

Suppose there is a train with 24 carriages which are going to be put together to make up some new trains. Can you find all the ways that this can be done?

Coloured Squares

Age 5 to 7
Challenge Level

Daman at St.Joseph's School in Vancouver, Canada; David from Tithe Barn Primary School and Alice agreed on the answer to Coloured Squares. David explains how he tackled it:

I did this puzzle by working through the clues one by one. I used multilink to represent the colours and used pink instead of purple.

I thought at first that the order on one of the lines was: green, orange, blue. Then I knew that orange was underneath so I did that too. Then I knew that yellow was to the left of purple and orange so I altered it completely. I made the top row: red, blue, green and underneath: yellow, purple, orange. Here is the image that David sent:

Two rows of three rectangles. Top row from left to right: red, blue green. Bottom row from left to right: yellow, purple, orange
The NRICH Project aims to enrich the mathematical experiences of all learners. To support this aim, members of the NRICH team work in a wide range of capacities, including providing professional development for teachers wishing to embed rich mathematical tasks into everyday classroom practice.
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