Cut four triangles from a square as shown in the picture. How many different shapes can you make by fitting the four triangles back together?
Hover your mouse over the counters to see which ones will be removed. Click to remove them. The winner is the last one to remove a counter. How you can make sure you win?
You have 4 red and 5 blue counters. How many ways can they be placed on a 3 by 3 grid so that all the rows columns and diagonals have an even number of red counters?
A tetromino is made up of four squares joined edge to edge. Can this tetromino, together with 15 copies of itself, be used to cover an eight by eight chessboard?
Swap the stars with the moons, using only knights' moves (as on a chess board). What is the smallest number of moves possible?
10 space travellers are waiting to board their spaceships. There are two rows of seats in the waiting room. Using the rules, where are they all sitting? Can you find all the possible ways?
What is the best way to shunt these carriages so that each train can continue its journey?
What is the smallest cuboid that you can put in this box so that you cannot fit another that's the same into it?
How will you go about finding all the jigsaw pieces that have one peg and one hole?
Can you shunt the trucks so that the Cattle truck and the Sheep truck change places and the Engine is back on the main line?
Building up a simple Celtic knot. Try the interactivity or download the cards or have a go on squared paper.
A magician took a suit of thirteen cards and held them in his hand face down. Every card he revealed had the same value as the one he had just finished spelling. How did this work?
How many different ways can you find of fitting five hexagons together? How will you know you have found all the ways?
How many DIFFERENT quadrilaterals can be made by joining the dots on the 8-point circle?
Take a rectangle of paper and fold it in half, and half again, to make four smaller rectangles. How many different ways can you fold it up?
How many different triangles can you make on a circular pegboard that has nine pegs?
How can you arrange the 5 cubes so that you need the smallest number of Brush Loads of paint to cover them? Try with other numbers of cubes as well.
A dog is looking for a good place to bury his bone. Can you work out where he started and ended in each case? What possible routes could he have taken?
Here you see the front and back views of a dodecahedron. Each vertex has been numbered so that the numbers around each pentagonal face add up to 65. Can you find all the missing numbers?
This task, written for the National Young Mathematicians' Award 2016, involves open-topped boxes made with interlocking cubes. Explore the number of units of paint that are needed to cover the boxes. . . .
In how many ways can you fit two of these yellow triangles together? Can you predict the number of ways two blue triangles can be fitted together?
Design an arrangement of display boards in the school hall which fits the requirements of different people.
What is the greatest number of counters you can place on the grid below without four of them lying at the corners of a square?
Can you work out how many cubes were used to make this open box? What size of open box could you make if you had 112 cubes?
An extension of noughts and crosses in which the grid is enlarged and the length of the winning line can to altered to 3, 4 or 5.
Can you fit the tangram pieces into the outline of this plaque design?
Can you logically construct these silhouettes using the tangram pieces?
An irregular tetrahedron is composed of four different triangles. Can such a tetrahedron be constructed where the side lengths are 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 units of length?
Can you fit the tangram pieces into the outline of Mai Ling?
A game for 1 person. Can you work out how the dice must be rolled from the start position to the finish? Play on line.
This 100 square jigsaw is written in code. It starts with 1 and ends with 100. Can you build it up?
Can you fit the tangram pieces into the outline of Little Fung at the table?
Can you fit the tangram pieces into the outline of Little Ming playing the board game?
How many different cuboids can you make when you use four CDs or DVDs? How about using five, then six?
Can you fit the tangram pieces into the outline of this telephone?
Can you fit the tangram pieces into the outline of this goat and giraffe?
Can you fit the tangram pieces into the outline of this sports car?
Here is a solitaire type environment for you to experiment with. Which targets can you reach?
Can you fit the tangram pieces into the outline of Granma T?
Can you fit the tangram pieces into the outline of these rabbits?
At the time of writing the hour and minute hands of my clock are at right angles. How long will it be before they are at right angles again?
Can you fit the tangram pieces into the outline of these convex shapes?
Is it possible to rearrange the numbers 1,2......12 around a clock face in such a way that every two numbers in adjacent positions differ by any of 3, 4 or 5 hours?
Exchange the positions of the two sets of counters in the least possible number of moves
Can you fit the tangram pieces into the outline of Little Ming?
Have a look at what happens when you pull a reef knot and a granny knot tight. Which do you think is best for securing things together? Why?
Can you fit the tangram pieces into the outline of the rocket?
I found these clocks in the Arts Centre at the University of Warwick intriguing - do they really need four clocks and what times would be ambiguous with only two or three of them?