Which is a better fit, a square peg in a round hole or a round peg
in a square hole?
At the beginning of the night three poker players; Alan, Bernie and Craig had money in the ratios 7 : 6 : 5. At the end of the night the ratio was 6 : 5 : 4. One of them won $1 200. What were the assets of the players at the beginning of the evening?
A garrison of 600 men has just enough bread ... but, with the news
that the enemy was planning an attack... How many ounces of bread a
day must each man in the garrison be allowed, to hold out 45 days
against the siege of the enemy?
Natalie of West Flegg Middle School sent in
the solution which we have reproduced below and Rachel from Flegg
High School also sent a good solution to this one. Thank you
This is Natalie's solution:
First I drew a circle and worked out how long it would take Anne
to get a quarter of the way around, and an eighth of the way
I divided 40 by 4 (10) and then 10 by 2. Then I worked out where
Anne would be after 15 seconds.
After working this out I divided 15 by 5 (3). Now I knew how
long Brenda would take to get an eighth of the way around, so I
timesed 3 by 8 (24). Brenda takes 24 seconds to get round the
After thinking this out I divided 60 (amount of seconds) by 5
(amount of half laps Cathy will have to do to catch Anne up). The
answer came to 12. To find out Cathy's full lap time, I timesed
this by 2 (24). Cathy and Brenda take the same amount of time to
get around the track. They meet every 12 seconds.
Natalie drew some more circuit diagrams to
check this. Well done Natalie.