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Lavonne is testing a secret code with her friend Jack. First, she picks 3 different secret numbers between 1 and 9. Then she finds the sum of each pair of numbers. Lavonne wants to know if Jack can figure out the original secret numbers just from the sums?

Farmer Wallace packages his eggs in cartons that hold a dozen eggs. In March, he sells 5 standard orders of eggs to the local grocery store. Each standard order consists of 4 grosses of eggs. A gross is 144 eggs. How many cartons of eggs did Farmer Wallace sell?

Catalina won a game show prize! She spent 3/4 of it on a trip into space. She spent 2/3 of her remaining money climbing Mount Everest. Finally, she donated the last $100,000 to wildlife. How much did she win?

Holly loves drawing and her favourite colours have been sharpened a lot. Her most favourite colour, rose, is exactly 3cm long. She discovers that the teal pencil is exactly 4cm, and the almond pencil is exactly 6cm. What lengths from 1-10 cm can Holly make with her pencils?

In 2023, Double Helix readers busted a bunch of brainteasers! Here are the tippy-top, most popular puzzles of the year.

Can you find a different set of 5 positive whole numbers with the same stats?

Difficulty: Fun Ellen has a set of 6 weights that come in pairs. One pair is a magical set of negative weights (think helium balloons that take weight away). 2 of the weights are 1 kilogram each, 2 of the weights are 5 kilograms each, and the 2 magical weights are -3 kilograms each. Ellen […]

Difficulty: Fun Triangular numbers are numbers that can be formed into a triangle. For example, 3 is a triangular number with 2 dots on the bottom row and 1 dot on top row forming an equilateral triangle of 3 dots. 6 is the next triangular number with 3 dots on the bottom, 2 dots in […]

Difficulty: Tricky Anas is making a map of his friend group. In his map, each circle is a person. A line joins 2 circles if and only if those 2 people are friends. Using the clues below, can you figure out who goes where on the map? 1. Anas has 3 friends: Ruth, Mitra, and […]

Difficulty: Tricky Ahmad’s computer scientist mother gives him a binary stopwatch that counts minutes using only 1’s and 0’s – just like a computer! The binary stopwatch has 6 placeholders where the 1’s and 0’s appear. When the binary stopwatch is reset, all the placeholders are zeros. Ahmad finds a regular stopwatch, resets both stopwatches, […]