#194 World Cup table
set by Rob Eastaway
It is time for the men鈥檚 Football World Cup. Countries in eight groups of four will play each other in a round robin, with the top two in each group qualifying for the last 16.
The final tables of the group stage provide ready-made puzzles because it is often possible to figure out the results of a group鈥檚 matches just from the information in a table. For example, the following is the final table from one of the groups in the 2018 World Cup. Can you figure out the results of all the matches played by teams A, B, C and D?
Solution next week
#193 Flush tiling
Set by Alison Kiddle
Solution
The toilet (red) can go in any corner or in the middle square of any side, with two examples above.
To prove that these nine squares are the only ones where it is possible to leave a gap for the toilet, note that each L-shaped tile can only cover one of the red squares in the diagram below. Since Bonnie needs 8 L tiles to cover 24 squares, she can cover eight of the nine red squares at most, so one will be left uncovered.
Quick quiz #178
1 The order Blattodea contains which two types of insect?
2 A gumma is a soft, non-cancerous growth that is characteristic of the tertiary stage of which disease?
3 Which desert is home to the Very Large Telescope and will be home to the Extremely Large Telescope?
4 The gauss is a unit of what?
5 Which element has the lowest boiling point?
Quick quiz #178
Answers
1 Cockroaches and termites
2 Syphilis
3 The Atacama desert
4 Magnetic induction, or magnetic flux density
5 Helium, at -268.9掳C