IMPOSSIPUZZLES

1

Fred looked up from his book. “Listen to this, Susan,” he said. He started reading: “‘That year the landlord gave out hearty bonuses to all his farm hands and their families, a hundred souls all told. One hundred pounds did Ben Burbank distribute among them, ten pounds to each man, fifty pence each woman, and ten pence each child.’” The good old days? Well, how many children must there have been?

2

“There you are, 41 Easter eggs for the hunt” said John, putting a cardboard box on the table. “Just £6.13 for the lot.” Mary shook her head. “Why now? It’s a little early for Easter.” “A sudden urge, and old Sam was having a sale,” her husband replied. “And it’s odd about the prices. I got three sorts, as many of each as the price in pence for that sort.” What were the prices?

3

Was that your new maths teacher you were talking to?” Greg asked. “She looked a bit young, is she in her twenties?” Betty smiled. “That’s right, Dad, and she’s lots of fun. Today she told us her age is one less than four times the product of its digits. That’s our homework.” How old?

4

“Get the square root of that enormous number, and in my head?” Charlie asked. “Of course not.” Stan grinned. “But it’s really very easy, Dad,” he replied. “All you do is double its last four digits.” The boy was right, so what was that number?

5

“See that car, Dad,” Doug said suddenly. “Its number is ours, except that they’ve got our last pair of digits in front of our other three.” “That’s a coincidence,” his father commented. “But what’s all your figuring about?” “Something else I found,” the boy replied. “Their number is one less than half ours.” What were the numbers?

6

“The time?” said Harry, glancing at his watch. “Why don’t you work it out? In two hours it will be half as many minutes after noon today as it was minutes before midnight two hours ago.” That kept Betty busy quite a while. But what was the time?