Imagine you have an unlimited number of four types of triangle. How many different tetrahedra can you make?
In how many ways can you fit two of these yellow triangles together? Can you predict the number of ways two blue triangles can be fitted together?
How can you put five cereal packets together to make different shapes if you must put them face-to-face?
Take a rectangle of paper and fold it in half, and half again, to make four smaller rectangles. How many different ways can you fold it up?
10 space travellers are waiting to board their spaceships. There are two rows of seats in the waiting room. Using the rules, where are they all sitting? Can you find all the possible ways?
An irregular tetrahedron is composed of four different triangles. Can such a tetrahedron be constructed where the side lengths are 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 units of length?
What is the smallest cuboid that you can put in this box so that you cannot fit another that's the same into it?
How will you go about finding all the jigsaw pieces that have one peg and one hole?
60 pieces and a challenge. What can you make and how many of the pieces can you use creating skeleton polyhedra?
How many different ways can you find of fitting five hexagons together? How will you know you have found all the ways?
How can you arrange the 5 cubes so that you need the smallest number of Brush Loads of paint to cover them? Try with other numbers of cubes as well.
Can you recreate these designs? What are the basic units? What movement is required between each unit? Some elegant use of procedures will help - variables not essential.
A dog is looking for a good place to bury his bone. Can you work out where he started and ended in each case? What possible routes could he have taken?
Use the interactivity to find all the different right-angled triangles you can make by just moving one corner of the starting triangle.
How many DIFFERENT quadrilaterals can be made by joining the dots on the 8-point circle?
Swap the stars with the moons, using only knights' moves (as on a chess board). What is the smallest number of moves possible?
Here you see the front and back views of a dodecahedron. Each vertex has been numbered so that the numbers around each pentagonal face add up to 65. Can you find all the missing numbers?
Let's say you can only use two different lengths - 2 units and 4 units. Using just these 2 lengths as the edges how many different cuboids can you make?
Hover your mouse over the counters to see which ones will be removed. Click to remove them. The winner is the last one to remove a counter. How you can make sure you win?
Can you find a cuboid that has a surface area of exactly 100 square units. Is there more than one? Can you find them all?
You have 4 red and 5 blue counters. How many ways can they be placed on a 3 by 3 grid so that all the rows columns and diagonals have an even number of red counters?
Can you shunt the trucks so that the Cattle truck and the Sheep truck change places and the Engine is back on the main line?
What is the best way to shunt these carriages so that each train can continue its journey?
What is the greatest number of counters you can place on the grid below without four of them lying at the corners of a square?
How many models can you find which obey these rules?
Find all the different shapes that can be made by joining five equilateral triangles edge to edge.
This task, written for the National Young Mathematicians' Award 2016, involves open-topped boxes made with interlocking cubes. Explore the number of units of paint that are needed to cover the boxes. . . .
When I fold a 0-20 number line, I end up with 'stacks' of numbers on top of each other. These challenges involve varying the length of the number line and investigating the 'stack totals'.
Arrange 9 red cubes, 9 blue cubes and 9 yellow cubes into a large 3 by 3 cube. No row or column of cubes must contain two cubes of the same colour.
Make your own double-sided magic square. But can you complete both sides once you've made the pieces?
Design an arrangement of display boards in the school hall which fits the requirements of different people.
Investigate the smallest number of moves it takes to turn these mats upside-down if you can only turn exactly three at a time.
Cut four triangles from a square as shown in the picture. How many different shapes can you make by fitting the four triangles back together?
Can you work out how many cubes were used to make this open box? What size of open box could you make if you had 112 cubes?
How many different triangles can you make on a circular pegboard that has nine pegs?
The planet of Vuvv has seven moons. Can you work out how long it is between each super-eclipse?
This cube has ink on each face which leaves marks on paper as it is rolled. Can you work out what is on each face and the route it has taken?
This challenge is to design different step arrangements, which must go along a distance of 6 on the steps and must end up at 6 high.
This Sudoku combines all four arithmetic operations.
There are nine teddies in Teddy Town - three red, three blue and three yellow. There are also nine houses, three of each colour. Can you put them on the map of Teddy Town according to the rules?
Using different numbers of sticks, how many different triangles are you able to make? Can you make any rules about the numbers of sticks that make the most triangles?
The ancient Egyptians were said to make right-angled triangles using a rope with twelve equal sections divided by knots. What other triangles could you make if you had a rope like this?
Rather than using the numbers 1-9, this sudoku uses the nine different letters used to make the words "Advent Calendar".
Can you put the numbers from 1 to 15 on the circles so that no consecutive numbers lie anywhere along a continuous straight line?
A magician took a suit of thirteen cards and held them in his hand face down. Every card he revealed had the same value as the one he had just finished spelling. How did this work?
How many ways can you find to do up all four buttons on my coat? How about if I had five buttons? Six ...?
If you had 36 cubes, what different cuboids could you make?
These activities lend themselves to systematic working in the sense that it helps if you have an ordered approach.
Here are four cubes joined together. How many other arrangements of four cubes can you find? Can you draw them on dotty paper?
Roll two red dice and a green dice. Add the two numbers on the red dice and take away the number on the green. What are all the different possible answers?