This is a nice problem from the UKMT Senior Mathematics Challenge for 2022:
“Five line segments of length 2, 2, 2, 1 and 3 connect two corners of a square as shown in the diagram. What is the shaded area?
A 8____B 9____C 10____D 11____E 12”
The pleasure of solving this problem may be lessened if one is under a time crunch, as is the case with all these timed tests.
See the Broken Diagonal Problem for solutions.
This is an interesting problem from the Scottish Mathematics Council (SMC) 2014 Senior Math Challenge .
“Two straight sections of a road, each running from east to west, and located as shown, are to be joined smoothly by a new roadway consisting of arcs of two circles of equal radius. The existing roads are to be tangents at the joins and the arcs themselves are to have a common tangent where they meet. Find the length of the radius of these arcs.”
See the Road Construction Problem for solutions.
This math problem from Colin Hughes’s Maths Challenge website (mathschallenge.net) hearkens back to basic physics.
“A boy drops a stone down a well and hears the splash from the bottom after three seconds. Given that sound travels at a constant speed of 300 m/s and the acceleration of the stone due to gravity is 10 m/s2, how deep is the well?”
See the Falling Sound Problem for solutions.
This turned out to be a challenging puzzle from the 1980 Canadian Math Society’s magazine, Crux Mathematicorum.
“Proposed by Leon Bankoff, Los Angeles, California.
Professor Euclide Paracelso Bombasto Umbugio has once again retired to his tour d’ivoire where he is now delving into the supersophisticated intricacies of the works of Grassmann, as elucidated by Forder’s Calculus of Extension. His goal is to prove Neuberg’s Theorem:
If D, E, F are the centers of squares described externally on the sides of a triangle ABC, then the midpoints of these sides are the centers of squares described internally on the sides of triangle DEF. [The accompanying diagram shows only one internally described square.]
Help the dedicated professor emerge from his self-imposed confinement and enjoy the thrill of hyperventilation by showing how to solve his problem using only highschool, synthetic, Euclidean, ‘plain’ geometry.”
Alas, my plane geometry capability was inadequate to solve the puzzle that way, so I had to resort to the sledge hammer of analytic geometry, trigonometry, and complex variables.
Here is another elegant Quantum math magazine Brainteaser problem.
“Two squares are inscribed in a semicircle as shown in the figure at left. Prove that the area of the big square is four times that of the small one.”
This is a work problem from Geoffrey Mott-Smith from 1954.
“ ‘If a man can do a job in one day, how long will it take two men to do the job?’
No book of puzzles, I take it, is complete without such a question. I will not blame the reader in the least if he hastily turns the page, for I, too, was annoyed by “If a man” conundrums in my schooldays. Besides, the answer in the back of the book was always wrong. Everybody knows it will take the two men two days to do the job, because they will talk about women and the weather, they will argue about how the job is to be done, they will negotiate as to which is to do it. In schoolbooks the masons and bricklayers are not men, they are robots.
Strictly on the understanding that I am really talking about robots, I will put it to you:
If a tinker and his helper can refabulate a widget in 2 days, and if the tinker working with the apprentice instead would take 3 days, while the helper and the apprentice would take 6 days to do the job, how long would it take each working alone to refabulate the widget?”
See Refabulating Widgets for a solution.
This seemingly impossible problem from Presh Talwalkar turned out to be quite solvable upon reflection.
“A similar question was given to students in Thailand. For real numbers x, y, what is the minimum value of
√((x – 4)2 + (y – 10)2) + √((x – 44)2 + (y – 19)2)”
See the Square Root Minimum for solutions.
This is a fun problem from the 1989 American Invitational Mathematics Exam (AIME).
“Two skaters, Allie and Billie, are at points A and B, respectively, on a flat, frozen lake. The distance between A and B is 100 meters. Allie leaves A and skates at a speed of 8 meters per second on a straight line that makes a 60° angle with AB. At the same time Allie leaves A, Billie leaves B at a speed of 7 meters per second and follows the straight path that produces the earliest possible meeting of the two skaters, given their speeds. How many meters does Allie skate before meeting Billie?”
See the Skating Rendezvous Problem for solutions.
This puzzle from the Scottish Mathematical Council (SMC) Middle Mathematics Challenge has an interesting twist to it.
“Two young mountaineers were descending a mountain quickly at 6 miles per hour. They had left the hostel late in the day, had climbed to the top of the mountain and were returning by the same route. One said to the other “It was three o’clock when we left the hostel. I am not sure if we will be back before nine o’clock.” His companion replied “Our pace on the level was 4 miles per hour and we climbed at 3 miles per hour. We will just make it.” What is the total distance they would cover from leaving the hostel to getting back there?”
See the Mountain Climbing Puzzle for solutions.
Via Alex Bellos I found another Russian math magazine with fun problems. It is called Kvantik and Tanya Khovanova has a description (2015):
“Kvant [Quantum] was a very popular science magazine in Soviet Russia. It was targeted to high-school children and I was a subscriber. Recently I discovered that a new magazine appeared in Russia. It is called Kvantik, which means Little Kvant. It is a science magazine for middle-school children. The previous years’ archives are available online in Russian. I looked at 2012, the first publication year, and loved it.”
Unfortunately, the magazine is in Russian and the later issues are only partially given online. To get the full magazine you need to subscribe. I used Google Translate and the mathematical context to render the English. Here is an interesting geometric problem that I would have thought to be quite challenging for middle schoolers.
“The vertices of the two squares are joined by two segments, as in the figure. It is given that these segments are equal. Find the angle between them.
Egor Bakaev”
See the Two Squares Problem for a solution.
(Update 8/22/2022, 9/1/2022) Simpler Solution, Simplest Solution!
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