1.
Four flocks — P, Q, R, and S — were counted. Q had more birds than P. R had fewer than P. S had more than Q. List all four from most to least.
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2.
Three rangers — Nadia, Yusra, and Tariq — each track one animal: a whale, a goose, or a turtle. Nadia does not track the turtle. Tariq tracks the whale. Who tracks each animal?
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3.
A resting flock has 6 geese at 2:00. The flock doubles every 20 minutes as more land. How many geese are there at 3:00?
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4.
Nest boxes are numbered 1 to 24. Every 3rd box gets a blue tag. Every 4th box gets a red tag. Which boxes get both tags? And how many boxes get no tag at all?
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1.
Five birds were ranked by how far they flew. The tern flew farther than the stork. The goose flew less far than the stork. The swift flew farther than the tern. The crane flew somewhere between the goose and the stork. List all five from farthest to shortest.
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2.
A ranger says: “Every bird we tagged on Monday was a goose.” On Tuesday she tags a goose. Does that prove her statement was right? Explain what her statement does and does not tell you.
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3.
A whale leaves a bay at 6:40 in the morning and swims for 8 hours and 15 minutes. It arrives in a zone where the clocks are 1 hour behind the bay. What time is it on the local clock when the whale arrives?
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4.
Marker posts stand along a 315 km route, one every 45 km, with a post at the very start and one at the very end. How many posts are there in total?
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5.
6 tagging teams meet up. Every team shakes hands with every other team exactly once. How many handshakes happen altogether?
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Answer:
3rd Grade
1. S, Q, P, R.
Q > P and R < P puts them in order Q, P, R. S > Q goes on the front: S, Q, P, R. Building the chain one clue at a time beats guessing.
2. Tariq — whale. Nadia — goose. Yusra — turtle.
Tariq is given. Nadia is not the turtle and the whale is taken, so Nadia has the goose. Yusra gets what is left. The “not” clue is the one that does the work.
3. 48 geese.
2:00 → 3:00 is 60 minutes = three 20-minute steps. 6 → 12 → 24 → 48. Counting the doublings is the whole puzzle; 6 × 3 = 18 is the trap.
Both tags: boxes 12 and 24. No tag at all: 12 boxes.
Both = multiples of 12 → 12 and 24. Blue (3, 6, 9…) is 8 boxes, red (4, 8, 12…) is 6, minus the 2 counted twice = 12 tagged, so 24 − 12 = 12 untagged.
4th Grade
1. Swift, tern, stork, crane, goose.
Swift > tern > stork from the first and third clues; goose is below the stork; the crane sits between goose and stork. Five items, and the “between” clue only makes sense once the others are placed.
No — it proves nothing about Tuesday.
Her statement is only about Monday's birds. A goose on Tuesday is neither proof nor disproof. The one thing that would disprove her: a Monday bird that was not a goose. Accept any answer that separates “all Monday's were geese” from “all geese are tagged on Monday”.
1:55 in the afternoon (13:55) local time.
6:40 + 8 h = 2:40 pm, + 15 min = 2:55 pm bay time. Local clocks are 1 hour behind, so 1:55 pm. Two steps: do the elapsed time first, adjust the zone second.
8 posts.
315 ÷ 45 = 7 gaps, and posts at both ends means 7 + 1 = 8. The classic fencepost error: 7 is the number of gaps, not posts.
15 handshakes.
Each of the 6 teams shakes 5 others = 30, but every handshake was counted from both sides, so 30 ÷ 2 = 15. Or add 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1.