We are delighted to intro­duce you to Wes Car­roll who has gra­ciously cre­ated a few new puz­zles to bend all those sharp brains out there! Keep check­ing back, as we will con­tinue to release new puz­zles regularly.

Wes aspires to the Renais­sance ideal of excel­lence in mul­ti­ple fields: he is the head of Do The Math pri­vate tutor­ing ser­vices, Puz­zle Mas­ter for the Ask A Sci­en­tist lec­ture series, and an inter­na­tion­ally tour­ing per­former and teacher of music. Find out more at wescarroll.com.

With no fur­ther ado, the first puzzle!

Party For Polyglots

Dif­fi­culty: MEDIUM
Type: LOGIC

Ques­tion:
Of the 100 peo­ple at a recent party, 90 spoke Span­ish, 80 spoke Ital­ian, and 75 spoke Man­darin. At least how many spoke all three languages?

Have you solved it yet? If you are work­ing the prob­lem, mak­ing hypothe­ses, test­ing your ideas, and com­ing up with a solu­tion, you are using your frontal lobes. This is great exer­cise because the frontal lobes fol­low the “last hired, first fired” adage. They are they last areas of your brain to develop and the first to suf­fer the rav­ages of time and stress. So, keep exer­cis­ing! Just like your vol­un­tary mus­cles, reg­u­lar brain work­outs will help you keep more active neu­ronal cir­cuits in your brain which helps you func­tion bet­ter today, as well as cre­ate a pro­tec­tive bar­rier against aging.

Click to read the answer.

Let us know what you think of the puz­zle and please wel­come Wes!

Be Socia­ble, Share!

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