Math quiz

Here’s an interesting math quiz. It’s short (only eight questions), but you have to solve them mentally: no pencil or paper, except to record your answers. I answered five of the eight questions correctly. I won’t go into detail until you’ve had a chance to try the quiz yourself. Click the link below to see where I went wrong.


I was unable to answer question 5 at all. I kept trying to express it as some kind of algebraic formula I could solve, but I never managed to come up with anything that made sense. Eventually I gave up.
I answered questions 2 and 4 incorrectly not because my math was faulty, but because I misread the questions. For question 2, I arrived at an answer of 120 degrees. That is the angle described by the minute hand of a clock in 20 minutes — but the question asked about the hour hand.
For question 4, my answer was 4:00. That is what time it would be if the time that has passed since noon were a third of the time between noon and midnight. But the question clearly says “if the time which passed since noon constitutes a third of the time that remains until midnight.” Not the same thing.
I’m pleased to report that I spotted the trick questions 6 and 8. But I’m annoyed that I could have scored seven out of eight if I had just read the questions carefully.

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