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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, […]

Difficulty: Tricky You have 2 glasses, each filled with 100 millilitres (ml) of soda. One contains cola and one contains orange soda. First, you take a spoonful of cola and mix it into the orange soda. Next, you take an equal spoonful of the orange-cola mixture and put it into the glass of cola. Which […]

Difficulty: Fun The big rectangle below is made from 4 small rectangles. All the small rectangles are equal, meaning that they have the same size and shape. If the small rectangle’s short side is 8 centimetres, what is the length (long side) of the bigger rectangle?

Difficulty: Tricky Alex is playing a dice game with 2 standard 6-sided dice, one red and one blue. Each die has faces numbered from 1 to 6. Alex rolls both dice and adds up the numbers on the top faces. After a while, Alex notices that the sums are always between 2 and 12 and […]

Difficulty: Extreme A teacher wrote a whole number on the whiteboard and asked her students to say what numbers it could divide by. The 1st student said, “the number is divisible by 1.” The 2nd student said, “the number is divisible by 2.” The 3rd student said, “the number is divisible by 3.” And this […]