You are participating in a holiday gift exchange with a few classmates. You each write down your own name on a slip of paper and fold it up. Then all the students place their names into a single hat.

Twenty years ago, this puzzle appeared on a test administered to top-tier math students from 16 countries around the world. Only 10% of test takers got it right. In the U.S., only 4% managed to ...

While many scroll past riddles and puzzles without a second thought, there’s a growing number of online users who pause, squint, and dive headfirst into these brain-twisting challenges. For them, a ...

An old calculator uses a seven-segment display, in which numerals are represented by different patterns of vertical and horizontal line segments. But the device is faulty and no longer shows any ...

I’ve been out of school for decades, and I don’t spend my days solving equations (I’m more of a word person). Still, I like to think I have a solid grip on basic math: I can usually gauge whether a ...

From Quanta Magazine (find original story here). Most of the important discoveries in mathematics take place after decades or centuries of effort. If you want to attack the biggest problems, you’ll ...

Brain teasers are one of the best puzzles to test the sharpness of the brain. Readers must think creatively to solve brain teasers. Brain teasers present these challenges as picture puzzles, math ...