Can you solve it? All you need to know about 2025
Share:
Five fives alive!. As is traditional for the final column of year, we look ahead to all that the following twelve months will bring us. Numerically speaking, of course. 2025 will be the only time this century that the year is a square number. 442 = 1936. 452 = 2025.
![[25]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/1794688a766e7c0d35bc14d397ed6e7b7291bfe1/0_35_2104_318/master/2104.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
462 = 2116. In fact, since 45 = 20 + 25, we have the very nice equation:. (20 + 25)2 = 2025. 2025 is also the first year since 1520 that appears in the five times table. It has been a long wait. I asked Inder Taneja, a retired maths professor who looks for amusing patterns in numbers, for some fun ‘25’ facts. He sent me the following sum, which is equal to 25 whether you read it the right way up, or upside down, or in the mirror, or upside down in the mirror.
![[5 x 5 grid]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ae5be2281b5790f4196b6f649b0ede2e6f3c7eac/12_0_1071_1070/master/1071.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Today’s first puzzle is about a grid with 25 squares. Queens and pawns. Place five queens and three pawns in the grid so that no queen is attacking a pawn. A queen can move horizontally, vertically or diagonally. So, for those unfamiliar with the rules of the chess, the puzzle is asking you to place five pieces in the grid in such a way that there are exactly three cells these pieces cannot move to, horizontally, vertically or diagonally.
![[puzzle]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/1b30abe361c968b95b71e609a053080082404ab6/54_0_983_982/master/983.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Here’s a way to place four queens. But can you add a fifth? The puzzle is much harder than it looks (or it was for me.). Christmas star. Another puzzle that is much harder than it looks, and involves a 5, and is a bit festive, is this old chestnut (roasting on an open fire). There are 5 triangles in this five pointed star. Can you draw two straight lines through the star to create an image with 10 triangles? For this puzzle, only triangles that have no lines running though them count as triangles. And it is not a trick question – there is a simple way to do it!.
![[Screenshot 2024-12-21 at 11.51.58]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/acb14b0ffbc1ddfe50d4a52f1b8a7581a944b305/58_0_1368_1368/master/1368.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
