Blog

This traditional Chinese puzzle, known as a tangram, reveals some surprising properties of squares!

The soma cube is a tricky puzzle! First, you’ll glue some cubes together into strange shapes. Then see if you can get those shapes to come together!

Do you have a favourite mug? This is my favourite. Not only does it hold my hot chocolate, it has a wicked tricky puzzle on it!

Here’s a puzzle that’s easy to set up, but surprisingly tricky to solve. See if you can swap two counters just by sliding them!

Here’s a quick sliding puzzle to get your brain pumping. See if you can separate the light and dark counters in as few moves as possible!

Merry Christmas! Here’s our maths gift to you – a puzzle.

Double Helix magazine is excited to announce that we’re merging our newsletters Science by Email and Maths by Email, and adding a splash of technology and engineering news. Keep an eye out for our new look email, called Double Helix Extra!

Written by Mike McRae Around 15 years ago, a New Caledonian crow named Betty amazed scientists with her talent for tool-building. That was nothing – wait until your meet these clever cockatoos.

You’ll find yourself going a little loopy with this puzzle, but it’s worth unravelling the secret.

Here’s a tricky puzzle for you! An eight pointed star, and seven coins. Can you put all the coins onto the star?