New posts from mscroggs.co.uk.
The men's World Cup is coming up, so it's time to work out the cost of filling the official Panini sticker book again. Panini are boasting that this year's sticker book contains more stickers than ever , which can only mean one thing: you're going to have to buy more stickers than ever.But how much more than last time is completing this sticker book going to cost you? Buying stickers This year,…
This is an article that I wrote for Chalkdust issue 23 , and thenew puzzle it introduces appears on the cover of issue 23. In January, I paid a visit to MathsWorld, the recently opened maths discovery centrein London, alongside some other members of the Chalkdust team.One of the highlights of the trip was playing the two-player game Genius Square. In Genius Square, you start with a six-by-six…
I've recently been thinking about Wordle ,the Mastermind -styleword guessing game, that everyone was playing and talking about in 2020. Specifically, I've beenthinking about mixing Wordle with other games. Tetris The first game I tried mixing Wordle with is Tetris, the addictive puzzle game that madetetrominos famous. In Wordle, letters that you guess are coloured green (letter in the right…
Welcome to 2026 everyone! It's time to reveal the answers to the Advent Calendar puzzles and announce the winners.But first, some good news: with your help, Santa was able to order a new sleigh and Christmas was saved! Now that the competition is over, the questions and all the answers can be found at mscroggs.co.uk/puzzles/advent2025 .Before announcing the winners, I'm going to go through some of…
25 December It's nearly Christmas and something terrible has happened: after years of gradual wear and tear, Santa's magic sleigh has fallen apart.You need to help Santa build a new sleigh so that he can deliver presents before Christmas is ruined for everyone. The magic sleigh was built from parts bought from magic factories all over the world, and only the exact combination of parts will be…
As usual, I spent some time this November, designing this year's Chalkdust puzzle Christmas card (with help from TD and Jacob). The card contains 12 puzzles: 8 in the green section, and 4 in the red or yellow section. By colouring the two squares on the front of the card containing every pair of digits in each answer(eg if an answer in the green section were 3305, you would colour the squares…
25 December It's nearly Christmas and something terrible has happened: there's been a major malfunction in multiple machines in Santa's toy factory, andnot enough presents have been made. Santa has a backup warehouse full of wrapped presents that can be used in the case of severe emergency, but the warehouse is locked.You need to help Santa work out the code to unlock the warehouse so that he can…
25 December It's nearly Christmas and something terrible has happened: a machine in Santa's toy factory has malfunctioned, and is unable to finish building allthe presents that Santa needs.You need to help Santa work out how to fix the broken machine so that he can build the presents and deliver them before Christmas is ruined for everyone. Inside the broken machine, there were five toy production…
Advent 2022 logic puzzle It's nearly Christmas and something terrible has happened: an evil Christmas-hater has set three drones loose above Santa's stables. As long as the drones are flying around, Santa is unable totake off to deliver presents to children all over the world.You need to help Santa by destroying the drones so that he can deliver presents before Christmas is ruined for everyone.…
Advent 2021 logic puzzle It's nearly Christmas and something terrible has happened: a saboteur has infiltrated the stables where Santa's reindeer are kept, and has caused all three of Santa's test flights to be unsuccessful.You need to help Santa have a successful test flight so that he can deliver presents before Christmas is ruined for everyone. In order to have enough magical power to fly with…