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Broad Topics > Habits of Mind > Resourceful

Shifting Times Tables

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Can you find a way to identify times tables after they have been shifted up?

Tower of Hanoi

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

The Tower of Hanoi is an ancient mathematical challenge. Working on the building blocks may help you to explain the patterns you notice.

How Much Can We Spend?

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

A country has decided to have just two different coins, 3z and 5z coins. Which totals can be made? Is there a largest total that cannot be made? How do you know?

Dicey Operations

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Who said that adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing couldn't be fun?

Nice or Nasty

Stage: 2 and 3 Challenge Level:

There are nasty versions of this dice game but we'll start with the nice ones...

The Remainders Game

Stage: 2 and 3 Challenge Level:

A game that tests your understanding of remainders.

Cops and Robbers

Stage: 2, 3 and 4 Challenge Level:

Can you find a reliable strategy for choosing coordinates that will locate the robber in the minimum number of guesses?

M, M and M

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

If you are given the mean, median and mode of five positive whole numbers, can you find the numbers?

Which Spinners?

Stage: 4 and 5 Challenge Level:

Can you work out which spinners were used to generate the frequency charts?

Difference Sudoku

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

Use the differences to find the solution to this Sudoku.

A Chance to Win?

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Imagine you were given the chance to win some money... and imagine you had nothing to lose...

Transformation Game

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Why not challenge a friend to play this transformation game?

Substitution Cipher

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Find the frequency distribution for ordinary English, and use it to help you crack the code.

Product Sudoku

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

The clues for this Sudoku are the product of the numbers in adjacent squares.

Semi-regular Tessellations

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Semi-regular tessellations combine two or more different regular polygons to fill the plane. Can you find all the semi-regular tessellations?

Cosy Corner

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Six balls of various colours are randomly shaken into a trianglular arrangement. What is the probability of having at least one red in the corner?

Two's Company

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

7 balls are shaken in a container. You win if the two blue balls touch. What is the probability of winning?

Odds and Evens

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Is this a fair game? How many ways are there of creating a fair game by adding odd and even numbers?

Property Chart

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

A game in which players take it in turns to try to draw quadrilaterals (or triangles) with particular properties. Is it possible to fill the game grid?

Shapely Pairs

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

A game in which players take it in turns to turn up two cards. If they can draw a triangle which satisfies both properties they win the pair of cards. And a few challenging questions to follow...

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

A game for 2 or more people, based on the traditional card game Rummy. Players aim to make two `tricks', where each trick has to consist of a picture of a shape, a name that describes that shape, and. . . .

Arithmagons

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

Can you find the values at the vertices when you know the values on the edges?

Stars

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Can you find a relationship between the number of dots on the circle and the number of steps that will ensure that all points are hit?

Isosceles Triangles

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Draw some isosceles triangles with an area of $9$cm$^2$ and a vertex at (20,20). If all the vertices must have whole number coordinates, how many is it possible to draw?

Square It

Stage: 3 and 4 Challenge Level:

Players take it in turns to choose a dot on the grid. The winner is the first to have four dots that can be joined to form a square.

On the Edge

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

If you move the tiles around, can you make squares with different coloured edges?

Cuboids

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Find a cuboid (with edges of integer values) that has a surface area of exactly 100 square units. Is there more than one? Can you find them all?

The Spider and the Fly

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

A spider is sitting in the middle of one of the smallest walls in a room and a fly is resting beside the window. What is the shortest distance the spider would have to crawl to catch the fly?

Special Numbers

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

My two digit number is special because adding the sum of its digits to the product of its digits gives me my original number. What could my number be?

Hexy-metry

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

A hexagon, with sides alternately a and b units in length, is inscribed in a circle. How big is the radius of the circle?

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

How many different symmetrical shapes can you make by shading triangles or squares?

Triangles to Tetrahedra

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Imagine you have an unlimited number of four types of triangle. How many different tetrahedra can you make?

In a Box

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

Chris and Jo put two red and four blue ribbons in a box. They each pick a ribbon from the box without looking. Jo wins if the two ribbons are the same colour. Is the game fair?

Attractive Tablecloths

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

Charlie likes tablecloths that use as many colours as possible, but insists that his tablecloths have some symmetry. Can you work out how many colours he needs for different tablecloth designs?

Marbles in a Box

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

How many winning lines can you make in a three-dimensional version of noughts and crosses?

Two and Two

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

How many solutions can you find to this sum? Each of the different letters stands for a different number.

Where Can We Visit?

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Charlie and Abi put a counter on 42. They wondered if they could visit all the other numbers on their 1-100 board, moving the counter using just these two operations: x2 and -5. What do you think?

Funny Factorisation

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Using the digits 1 to 9, the number 4396 can be written as the product of two numbers. Can you find the factors?

How Old Am I?

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

In 15 years' time my age will be the square of my age 15 years ago. Can you work out my age, and when I had other special birthdays?

Dozens

Stage: 2 and 3 Challenge Level:

Do you know a quick way to check if a number is a multiple of two? How about three, four or six?

Gabriel's Problem

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Gabriel multiplied together some numbers and then erased them. Can you figure out where each number was?

Unequal Averages

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Play around with sets of five numbers and see what you can discover about different types of average...

Reversals

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Where should you start, if you want to finish back where you started?

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

What happens when you add a three digit number to its reverse?

Cryptarithms

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Can you crack these cryptarithms?

Box Plot Match

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

Match the cumulative frequency curves with their corresponding box plots.

Wipeout

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Can you do a little mathematical detective work to figure out which number has been wiped out?

Perception Versus Reality

Stage: 4 and 5 Challenge Level:

Infographics are a powerful way of communicating statistical information. Can you come up with your own?

Constructing Triangles

Stage: 3 Challenge Level:

Generate three random numbers to determine the side lengths of a triangle. What triangles can you draw?

Finding Factors

Stage: 4 Challenge Level:

Can you find the hidden factors which multiply together to produce each quadratic expression?