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Double Helix Extra readers really got busy with brainteasers in 2024! Let’s do a count down of your top 5:

To begin a brainteaser, it’s often a good idea to take a seat. Make sure you find the right one in this Wrong seat problem! The solution is surprisingly swift.

Keep your energy up with a brainteaser all about batteries. This year we were inspired to write several brainteasers based on recent science news published by our sister publication, Cosmos.

Sometimes to solve a problem, you need to work around it. You can do that literally with our Walkin’ the perimeter geometry puzzle.An outline shaped like a boxy trace of an upper-case ‘P’ with six sides and all right angles. Another way to describe the shape is a large rectangle sitting on top of a smaller rectangle in such a way that they line up along the left side. The right side of the big rectangle hangs over the small rectangle. The top side is labelled 140 metres and the left side is labelled 200 metres. The remaining four sides are labelled with question marks.

Maybe that last one about a security guard set off alarm bells… so why not Beat the bell and solve our second most popular brainteaser of the year.

And finally, our most popular brainteaser of 2024 is Animal equations! By far the cutest problem we posted in 2024 and once you solve it, we hope it inspires you to get up and go outside this holiday season. Thanks for solving problems with us this year!

Sums written with Australian animal symbols in place of numbers.

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