Take the maths quiz that 200,000 British teenagers took earlier this month

Can you solve it? Are you smarter than a British 13-year-old?

Hello guzzlers,

Earlier this month more than 200,000 British students aged 13 to 16 sat the 2016 UK Intermediate Mathematical Challenge.

(That’s years 9, 10 and 11 in England and the equivalent years in Scotland and Northern Ireland).

The exam is run by the UK Mathematics Trust, a charity that promotes maths education by organising national competitions. It gives a good snapshot of the sort of questions smart teenagers are able to solve.

How would the rest of us get on? I thought it would be fun to find out...

The full challenge lasts an hour and consists of 25 multiple choice questions. Today’s challenge consists of ten questions from this year’s paper. They start easy and get more difficult. The last three are particularly tough.

You should spend no more than 24 minutes on these questions. That’s an average of 2min 24secs per question. Use of rough paper is allowed. Oh, and calculators are forbidden.

Make a note of your answers before you press submit. At 5pm GMT today I will reveal the answers, with workings, so you can see how well you got on. I will also reveal the percentage who got each question right - and compare it with the percentages of the students who took the paper ten days ago. You’ll be able to tell if you are one of the 91 per cent (Question one), or the 3 per cent (Question ten).

UPDATE: The post with the answers is now launched.

1. What is the value of 6102 − 2016?

A 3994

B 4086

C 4096

D 4114

E 4994

Did you solve it? Are you smarter than a British 13 year old? Read more

2. Which of the following fractions is closest to 1?

A 7/8

B 8/7

C 9/10

D 10/11

E 11/10

3. One third of the animals in Jacob’s flock are goats, the rest are sheep. There are twelve more sheep than goats.

How many animals are there altogether in Jacob’s flock?

A 12

B 24

C 36

D 48

E 60

4. The net shown consists of squares and equilateral triangles. The net is folded to form a rhombicuboctahedron, as shown.

When the face marked P is placed face down on a table, which face will be facing up?

A A

B B

C C

D D

E E

5. Tegwen has the same number of brothers as she has sisters. Each one of her brothers has 50% more sisters than brothers.

How many children are in Tegwen’s family?

A 5

B 7

C 9

D 11

E 13

6. How many of the following positive integers are divisible by 24?

2 2 x 3 2 x 5 2 x 7 3



x 3 x 5 x 7 2 2 x 3 2 x 5 3 x 7 2



x 3 x 5 x 7 2 2 x 3 3 x 5 2 x 7 2



x 3 x 5 x 7 23 x 32 x 52 x 72

A 0

B 1

C 2

D 3

E 4

7. A list of positive integers has a median of 8, a mode of 9 and a mean of 10.

What is the smallest possible number of integers in the list?

A 5

B 6

C 7

D 8

E 9

8. In a particular group of people, some always tell the truth, the rest always lie. There are 2016 in the group. One day, the group is sitting in a circle. Each person in the group says, “Both the person on my left and the person on my right are liars.”

What is the difference between the largest and smallest number of people who could be telling the truth?

A 0

B 72

C 126

D 288

E 336

9. Every day, Aimee goes up an escalator on her journey to work. If she stands still, it takes her 60 seconds to travel from the bottom to the top. One day the escalator was broken so she had to walk up it. This took her 90 seconds.

How many seconds would it take her to travel up the escalator if she walked up at the same speed as before while it was working?

A 30

B 32

C 36

D 45

E 75

10. The tiling pattern shown uses two types of tile, regular hexagons and equilateral triangles, with the length of each side of the equilateral triangles equal to half the length of each side of the hexagons. A large number of tiles is used to cover a floor.

Which of the following is closest to the fraction of the floor that is shaded black?

A 1/8

B 1/10

C 1/12

D 1/13

E 1/16

I post a puzzle here every second Monday.



My most recent book is the mathematical adult colouring book Snowflake Seashell Star. (In the US its title is Patterns of the Universe.)

You can check me out on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and my personal website.

And if know of any great puzzles that you would like me to set here, get in touch.