December 18 is National Bake Cookies Day, which means we HAVE TO bake some cookies and eat them. We’re loving these math-y cookies made by computer science professor Francesco De Comite. The birds lock together perfectly with copies of themselves, and are based on a drawing by a famous artist named Escher. Francesco also made puzzly Escher lizards, fish and geese cookies. See if you can cut your own cookie puzzles!
Wee ones: If you’re counting cookies you’ve eaten and you’ve already had 3, what number do you say next?
Little kids: If you stack 2 goose cookies, then 3 fish, then 4 more geese, how many cookies do you have? Bonus: If you eat 2 of the cookies, at least how many geese do you have to have left?
Big kids: If the 1st lizard faces up, the 2nd faces right, the 3rd faces down and the 4th faces left, then the 5th starts over facing up, which way does the 19th lizard face? Bonus: If you have enough dough to make 3 more chocolate fish than vanilla geese, and you can make 47 cookies in total, how many of each can you make?
Answers:
Wee ones: 4.
Little kids: 9 cookies. Bonus: At least 4 geese, even if both cookies you ate were geese.
Big kids: Down, since the 20th will face left like all multiples of 4. Bonus: 22 geese and 25 fish. If you set aside the 3 extra fish, you’d have 44 cookies evenly split.
