#brainsteem

Haven't published in ages, so let's have a few warm-up questions over the next days. Question Find the last two digits of 20182018 (If you cannot see the superscript, this is 2018^2018.) This is supposed

Haven't posted a mathematical puzzle for a while; time to remedy that! A fairly gentle start, inspired by a Junior Challenge. Question The aim is to fill the inverted pyramid of squares with six different

Brainsteem Quickfire Q.7 The Brainsteem Quickfire questions should (hopefully) be a bit quicker than the standard questions. As always, these should be done by hand without any computational assistance!

It has been a very long time since the last Brainsteem mathematical puzzle, but I feel it is time to reboot this feature! As always, these are designed to be done by hand; problems in computational mathematics

King Arthur was slumped on his throne, glaring at his squabbling knights. Time to fire them up a bit, he thought. "Right! All of you sit down! Time for another Grail quest." The knights groaned;

A) If we wish to write the number 2017 as the sum of k distinct square numbers, what is the minimum value of k? B) If we wish to write the number 2017 as the sum of q squares of prime numbers, not necessarily

The Question This is a mathematical question related to Steemit. Your Voting Power starts at 100%. Every time you vote, your Voting Power decreases by 2% of the Voting Power you had before the vote. Your

Remember that there are TWO prizes to aim for. The experiment of paying out 40% and 10% has not really worked. I thought it would increase the overall prizes but this hasn't happened yet. What it has done

The Question A football tournament involves 6 teams and each team plays all the other teams once. If a team wins a match it gets 3 points, with the loser getting 0; if a match is drawn then both teams

The Background A palindromic number is one that reads the same in both directions. These include 1331, 10901 and 77777. The largest palindrome made from the product of two 2-digit numbers is 99 x 91 =

The Question A 4-digit integer is shown on a digital screen. If you turn the screen upside down, the new number is 1716 less. Find the original number. This is at the level of a lower secondary national

The Question Find the sum of the digits of 50! For example, 5! = 5x4x3x2x1 = 120, so the sum of the digits is 1+2+0=3, and the digital sum is ds(5!)=3. This is at the level of a middle secondary national

Problem #3 is slightly different in that it is more of a research project, perhaps even a collaborative effort. The reason for this is that I'm proposing a question to which I don't know the answer! We

Remember that there are TWO prizes to aim for. Calculate the average value of the expression (a - b)2 + (b – c)2 + (c – d)2 + (d – e)2 + (e – f)2 over all possible arrangements of (a, b, c, d, e, f) of

Brainsteem Quickfire questions is a series of slightly easier, certainly faster, mathematical challenges in the Brainsteem family! Winner will get 2 SBD or a @randowhale upvote for free! Second prize is

Firstly, remember that there are TWO prizes, so anybody can win the random prize! The Question Suppose n is a product of four distinct primes a, b, c, d such that (i) a(a + b + c + d) = c(d - b); (ii)

Firstly, remember that there are TWO prizes, so anybody can win the random prize! Slowly, slowly, let's start to make these Brainsteem Prize Maths Puzzles a bit tougher! There are not many solutions, but

Today's number puzzle should be fairly straightforward! Find the missing numbers in this octagonal ring. What is the pattern or, more correctly, what is the algorithm that links the numbers together? I

I just made this number puzzle this afternoon to kick off my writing on Steemit. I hope you find it amusing. Take the word STEEMIT and replace each letter with a distinct numeral from 0 to 9 to create