Podcasts by Wes Carroll
Easy to visualize but challenging to solve: that's the kind of math puzzle you get here, one per episode.(Do you love the Car Talk Puzzler too? Yeah, that's what I'm trying for here, only with even more of a math bent.)
Further podcasts by Wes Carroll
Podcast on the topic Freizeit
All episodes
23: Your prime choice [***] from 2016-11-06T00:00
What’s the largest 2-digit prime factor of “200 choose 100”? // Spiciness: *** out of ****
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22: Split the check [*] from 2016-10-02T00:00
Last week, two of my friends and I went to a restaurant and had a lovely meal. We decided to evenly split the check, so we asked the waiter to just combine the totals. However, when the waiter came...
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21: The faulty odometer [***] from 2016-09-04T00:00
A faulty car odometer proceeds from digit 3 to digit 5, always skipping the digit 4, regardless of position. For example, after traveling one mile the odometer changed from 000039 to 000050. If the...
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20: The middle digit [**] from 2016-08-28T00:00
How many three-digit numbers satisfy the property that the middle digit is the average of the first and the last digits? // Spiciness: ** out of ****
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19: The token tax [**] from 2016-08-14T00:00
A game is played with tokens according to the following rule. In each round, the player with the most tokens gives one token to each of the other players and also places one token into a discard pi...
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18: The circular track [***] from 2016-07-31T00:00
Brenda and Sally run in opposite directions on a circular track, starting at diametrically opposite points. They first meet after Brenda has run 100 meters. They next meet after Sally has run 150 m...
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17: The red one [***] from 2016-07-24T00:00
My perpetually tricky friend told me that while she was walking through town she saw four particularly vibrant houses. There was an auburn one, a brick one, a cherry one, and one the shade of dogwo...
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16: In 80 days [*] from 2016-07-17T00:00
A friend of mine told me that she can walk a mile south, a mile east, a mile north and end up back home. I first thought she lived at the north pole, but she laughed and told me that, since there w...
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15: Coats of paint [***] from 2016-07-03T00:00
Working alone, I put two coats of paint on a wall, one before lunch and one after. Yesterday, I began at the usual time. Two hours before lunch I was joined by my good friend Aidan, who paints at ...
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14: O gnats, tango! [**] from 2016-06-19T00:00
Earlier this week I was rob...er...exploring tombs and I accidently triggered a trap that locked me in a room. With me are a pair of plates, a few thousand tiny statues of gnats and a puzzle that s...
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13: Order of operands [*] from 2016-06-05T00:00
Cindy was asked by her teacher to subtract 3 from a certain number and then divide the result by 9. Instead, she subtracted 9 and then divided the result by 3, giving an answer of 43. What would he...
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12: One light switch [****] from 2016-05-29T00:00
For years you were a lonely prisoner here. But earlier today, you were brought to a courtyard to join the others, where you are all addressed by the Warden. There have been budget cuts, he explai...
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11: The loopiest puzzler [***] from 2016-05-22T00:00
I have four lengths of rope. I hold them so that you can see all eight ends, but you can’t tell which end connects to which other end. You pick a pair of ends, and I tie them together. We repeat -...
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10: Eight's too many [**] from 2016-05-15T00:00
In the eight-term sequence "a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h", c represents 5, and the sum of any three consecutive terms is 30. What’s a+h? (Spiciness: ** out of ****)
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09: Coin flip winner [***] from 2016-05-08T00:00
We’re going to play a simple coin-flip game. We take turns flipping a fair coin. The first one to get “heads” wins. You go first. // What’s your chance of winning? // Spiciness: *** out of ****
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08: Strawberry ice cream [***] from 2016-05-01T00:00
A friend of mine has pictures of his three daughters on his mantle. He took the pictures when each of the girls was a particularly adorable age — the same age for all three of them, as it happens. ...
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07: Kiana's twin brothers [*] from 2016-04-24T00:00
Kiana has two older twin brothers. The product of their three ages is 128. What is the sum of their three ages? // Spiciness: * out of **** // (Today’s puzzler comes from the 2009 AMC 10 exam. Lea...
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06: That sounds accurate [***] from 2016-04-17T00:00
You have just tested positive for a condition known to affect 1% of the population. However, your doctor assures you that the test for this condition is only 90% accurate. You’re not sure whether...
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05: Ted's three statements [**] from 2016-04-10T00:00
Ted has three numbered statement for us to consider, and he wants to know whether the third one is true. Here they are: // 1. There are three numbered statements.2. Two of the three statements are...
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04: Many stuffie lines [*] from 2016-04-03T00:00
You have four stuffed animals. You line up three of them at a time, always single file. How many distinct lineups are possible? // Bonus points if you also tell me the number of distinct ways yo...
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03: Two square dice [***] from 2016-03-28T00:00
(Errata alert! This episode was re-uploaded with a correction on Monday March 28 at 10am PST. The corrected version is 6m04s long; the old one is 6m02s. Visit http://www.buzzsprout.com/56982 if yo...
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02: Glass half full? [*] from 2016-03-21T00:00
I have two cylindrical glasses that, when full, hold the same amount of water. The short glass has a radius that is half again as large as the tall one’s. Last night, I filled the short one complet...
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01: Peyton's great score [*] from 2016-03-14T00:00
Welcome to the podcast! Here are the rules, and the first puzzle. // Mr. Patrick teaches math to 15 students. He was grading tests and found that when he graded everyone's test except Payton&...
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01: Peyton's great score [*] from 2016-03-14T00:00
Welcome to the podcast! Here are the rules, and the first puzzle. // Mr. Patrick teaches math to 15 students. He was grading tests and found that when he graded everyone's test except Payton&...
Listen