Are you able to resolve it? That’s Arithmetic! | Arithmetic

Earlier than we get to at the moment’s puzzles, here’s a curious reality I discovered just lately:

When you begin with the phrase “YES” and advance every letter 16 alongside within the alphabet, it spells “OUI”?

Incroyable. I do know. On this lexical-numerical spirit, all of todays puzzles are about quantity patterns in phrases.

1. Pair and share

The phrases ‘zero’ and ‘one’ share letters (‘e’ and ‘o’). The phrases ‘one’ and ‘two’ share a letter (‘o’), and the phrases ‘two’ and ‘three’ additionally share a letter (‘t’). How far do it’s a must to depend in English to search out two consecutive numbers which don’t share a letter in frequent?

2. Spell it out!

‘Eleven trillion’ has an fascinating property. It consists of 14 letters and when written out is 11,000,000,000,000, which consists of 14 digits.

What’s the lowest quantity to have this identical property, particularly that the variety of letters when written as a phrase equals the variety of digits when written in numerals?

3. Satisfying sentence

“This sentence accommodates _______ letters”

Write a quantity in phrases within the clean house within the above sentence that can make the assertion true.

4. Humorous fractions (and win a prize)

Within the phrase “two ninths”, the fraction of letters which can be vowels is 2 ninths. Discover another fractions which have related self-referential properties.

Be inventive! You possibly can win a prize!

I’ve a duplicate of a brand new ebook, That’s Arithmetic, and I’ll ship it to the one who sends me the self-referential fraction I like essentially the most.

The ebook was written by Chris Smith, Scotland’s primary maths instructor, as a tribute to the mathematician and songwriter Tom Lehrer, who’s famously as playful with phrases as he’s with numbers.

Again in in 2020, throughout the Covid lockdown, Chris and two maths instructor friends Ed Southall and Ben Sparks determined to adapt Lehrer’s track That’s Arithmetic and ask maths popularisers from all over the world to sing a line from it. They edited the contributions collectively and the video – that includes Hannah Fry, Bobby Seagull, Rachel Riley, Vsauce, Eddie Woo and extra – registered extra that half one million views. Shortly afterward, a writer approached Smith asking him if he needed to show the track right into a kids’s ebook. He did, and the ebook is out on March 1 within the UK.

It was Chris who alerted me to the actual fact about YES and OUI , and he additionally instructed puzzles 1, 3 and 4. (Puzzle 2 is from Eric Angelini).

Unwell be again at 5pm UK with the options and the winner.

PLEASE NO SPOILERS. As a substitute talk about your favorite Tom Lehrer songs and canopy variations.

UPDATE: The options at the moment are up right here.

I set a puzzle right here each two weeks on a Monday. I’m all the time on the look-out for nice puzzles. If you want to recommend one, electronic mail me.

I give college talks about maths and puzzles (on-line and in particular person). In case your college is please get in contact.

Lastly, if you wish to see That’s Arithmetic sung by 22 maths popularisers (together with me) right here it’s:

That’s Arithmetic by Chris Smith primarily based on phrases by Tom Lehrer is out on March 1. You may preorder right here.