Solve this month’s puzzle to win a custom t-shirt or a Webkinz™ toy.

A snail creeps 5 ft up a wall during the daytime. After all the labor it does throughout the day, it stops to rest a while… but falls asleep! The next morning it wakes up and discovers that it has slipped down 1 ft while sleeping. If this happens every day, how many days will the snail take to reach the top of a wall 77 ft in height?

Answer to the December Puzzle: 36

The class has 9 children. The first child shakes hands with the other 8 children. The second child has already shaken hands with the first child, and so has to shake hands with only the other 7 children. In this manner, the second-last child has to shake hands with only one child, and the last child has already met all the children.

8 + 7 + 6 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 36.

Solve this month’s puzzle to win a custom t-shirt or a Webkinz™ toy.

It was Elizabeth’s first day at school. The teacher suggested that it would be a good idea for each child to meet every other child in the class. The teacher said, “When you meet, please shake hands and introduce yourself by name.”
If there were 13 children in the class, how many total handshakes were there?

The answer to the November puzzle:
The hare and the tortoise are together covering the distance at 13 miles per hour (i.e., on adding their speeds).
So, they will cover the distance of 91 miles in 7 hours.
Thus, in 7 hours, they will meet and the hare will have traveled 70 miles.

Solve this month’s puzzle to win a custom t-shirt or a Webkinz™ toy.

Haretown and Tortoiseville are 81 miles apart. A hare travels at 8 miles per hour from Haretown to Tortoiseville, while a tortoise travels at 1 mile per hour from Tortoiseville to Haretown.
If both set out at the same time, how many miles will the hare have to travel before meeting the tortoise en route?

Answer to the October Puzzle:

Turn on TWO of the switches and wait about 15 minutes…
Turn off ONE switch and go down to the basement…
The bulb that is lit matches up to the switch you left on…
The bulb that is off and WARM matches up to the switch that was on, but was turned off…
The bulb that is off and cold matches up to the switch you never touched.

There are three light switches up in the attic of an old house…  They control three light bulbs down in the basement.  The problem is that you don’t know which switch is connected to which bulb.  You can make one trip down to the basement to figure this out.
How are you going to do it?
Hint: Light bulbs that are “on” get hot.

Answer to the September Puzzle:

Fold the dollar bill into an angle smaller than a quarter (so that the quarter can’t fall through) and then balance the quarter on the angle.

Solve this month’s puzzle to win a custom t-shirt or a Stikfas™ toy on September 30.

Balance a quarter on the edge of a dollar bill without using props. Show an instructor how you did it, and put your name and email in the jar to win! You can also send an email to best.stpeters@gmail.com for a chance to win.