#52 Bus change
I am about to get on the bus, but I don’t have the exact money for the £1 fare. The driver doesn’t give change so I hand over more than £1 and they keep the excess.
Once I have sat down, I realise that even though I didn’t hand over all my coins, the amount of money I had with me was the largest possible amount I could have had in change without being able to pay £1 (or any multiple of £1) exactly. How much did I have?
Answer next week
#51 Birthday candles

Solution
If you start by blowing on one candle and work your way around the cake, blowing on each candle once, this will put out all the candles in seven puffs – and this is the fewest puffs you can do it in. The trick is to make sure each candle gets blown on an odd number of times.
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Quick quiz #44
1 NASA’s COBE satellite, launched in 1989, was the first to make detailed measurements of what?
2 With what recent breakthrough in genetics are the names Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna associated?
3 Rumex obtusifolius to counteract the effects of Urtica dioica. What?
4 6, 28, 496, 8128 … what sequence of numbers is this?
5 In organic chemistry, what is the name of the process of splitting complex molecules such as long-chain hydrocarbons by breaking carbon-carbon bonds?
Answers below
Quick quiz #44
Answers
1 The cosmic microwave background, the afterglowof the big bang. It stands for Cosmic Background Explorer
2 CRISPR genome editing
3 Dock leaves against nettle stings
4 Perfect numbers, equal to the sum of their divisors (eg, 6 = 3 + 2 + 1)
5 Cracking