We really enjoyed working on the following puzzle from Nrich.
Thirteen nations competed in a sports tournament. Unfortunately, we do not have the final medal table, but we have the following pieces of information:
1. Turkey and Mexico both finished above Italy and New Zealand.
2. Portugal finished above Venezuela, Mexico, Spain and Romania.
3. Romania finished below Algeria, Greece, Spain and Serbia.
4. Serbia finished above Turkey and Portugal, both of whom finished below Algeria and Russia.
5. Russia finished above France and Algeria.
6. Algeria finished below France but above Serbia and Spain.
7. Italy finished below Greece and Venezuela, but above New Zealand.
8. Venezuela finished above New Zealand but below Greece.
9. Greece finished below Turkey, who came below France.
10. Portugal finished below Greece and France.
11. France finished above Serbia, who came above Mexico.
12. Venezuela finished below Mexico, and New Zealand came above Spain.
We came up with different strategies to sort out the medal table, and we were largely successful eventually, but we were all impressed by a quick way to solve it!