Maths Problem Solving Starters

Levels 1 – 3

Name: ______________________________

Class: ______________________________

Teacher: ______________________________

Remember:
 You will need: pen, pencil, rubber and a ruler.
 Check your work carefully.
 Show all of your working out, with clear steps.
1. Sumire can record up to 40 hours of television programmes on
her TV recorder. She has already recorded 35 hours of
programmes on the recorder. She wants to keep all these
recordings. There are three more programmes Sumire wants to
record.

Game show 50 minutes

Film 2 hours 40 minutes
Reality show 1 hour 35 minutes

Can Sumire record all three programmes on her TV recorder?

You must show all your working.

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2. Daniel carried out a survey of his friends’ favourite flavour of
crisps. Here are his results.

Plain Chicken Bovril Salt and vin. Plain

Salt and vin. Plain Chicken Plain Bovril
Plain Chicken Bovril Salt and vin. Bovril
Bovril Plain Plain Salt and vin. Plain

(a) Show this information in a diagram.

(b) Write down the number of Daniel’s friends whose favourite

flavour was Salt & Vinegar. _________

(c) Which was the favourite flavour of most of Daniel’s

friends?
_________
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3. 40 members of Arwick Youth Club go on a trip to a leisure /6

 centre. They go in minibuses that can each seat up to 15
people. It costs £30 for each minibus and £150 for the group to
have use of the leisure centre. How much will the trip cost per
person?

4. Simon spent ¼ of his wages on rent.

He spent 20% of his wages on food.
He spent 0.15 of his wages on clothes
Work out the fraction of his wages that he had left.

/3
5. The diagram shows a partly tiled wall.

Alfie is tiling the wall with black and grey tiles. He is going to use
a total of 10 black tiles. Alfie is going to make a symmetrical
pattern with the tiles.

(a) (i) On the diagram, show where Alfie could put the 4
black tiles he has left.

(ii) Work out the total number of grey tiles that Alfie
uses to tile the wall.

_________

Alfie has 4 boxes of grey tiles and 1 box of black tiles.

Each box of tiles costs £6.20

(b) Work out the total cost of the tiles.

£___________
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6. 64 small cubes are used to build a larger
cube. How many of the small cubes are
still missing?

_____

7 cubes are used to make this shape. Shade squares on this

grid to show the plan of the shape. One cube has already been
marked on the grid.

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7. The table gives information about an estate agent’s charges for
selling a house.
Value of house Estate agent’s charges
Up to £60 000 2% of the value of the house
Over £60 000 2% of the first £60 000
plus
1% of the remaining value of the
house
Ken uses this estate agent to sell his house. The estate agent
sold Ken’s house for £80 000. Work out the total charge that
Ken will have to pay.

£_________
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8. Mrs Miller is planning a party for 70 children. She will give each /4
child a party bag to take home. She will put a hat and a toy in
 each party bag.

Party bags are sold in packs of 12

Hats are sold in packs of 8
Toys are sold in packs of 9

Mrs Miller buys the smallest possible number of packs of hats,

toys and bags. Mrs Miller can fill more party bags than she
needs. How many more?

9. A supermarket sells 500g pots of yoghourt.

There is a special offer on yoghourt:
Buy 2 pots and get a 3rd one free!
A week later, the price of a single pot of yoghourt
is still the same, but the offer changes to:
Buy 1 pot and get a second one half price!
Is the second offer better than the first?
Show working to justify your answer.

/4
10. The two points A and
B on the grid are the
vertices of an
isosceles triangle.
A is at (9, 10); B is at
(6, 6).

(a) The other vertex

of the isosceles
triangle is at a point
with whole number
coordinates.
What could be the
coordinates of the
other vertex?

( ____ , ____ )

(b) There are several other points with whole number

coordinates that could
be the vertex of the isosceles triangle.
Give the co-ordinates of two more of these points.

( ____ , ____ ) and ( ____ , ____ )

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11. A bag contains only red counters and blue counters. There are
90 red counters in the bag. The probability of choosing a red
counter from the bag is 0.3. How many blue counters are in the
bag?

/2
12. A set of five numbers has:
a mode of 12
a median of 11
a mean of 10
What could the numbers be?

_____ _____ _____ _____ _____

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13. Mr and Mrs Ledger took their grandson Harry to Chic’s Diner.

Mr Ledger started with soup. He had steak and chips for his
main course and ice cream for dessert.
Mrs Ledger started with a prawn cocktail and a main course of
fish and chips. She did not have a desert.
Harry didn’t have a starter. He had a main course of fish and
chips and ice cream for dessert.
Mr and Mrs Ledger shared a bottle of red wine. Harry had a
glass of fruit juice.

(a) Work out the total bill including the service charge.

£__________
Chic has now increased all of his prices by 6%.
(b) Work out the new price of fish and chips.

£__________
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14. Four numbers are equally spaced on a number line.

Find the numbers represented by P and Q

P = _______ Q = _______
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15. Here is a block of squares.
Find the length of the thick line that goes
from A to B.

_______ cm
/2
16. A length of paper is 20cm long.
It has a 1.5 cm sticky strip at
each end. Four strips are stuck
together, with the sticky parts
overlapping exactly, to make a
loop of paper. What is the
circumference of the loop?

________ cm
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17. Here are some fractions.

(a) Which two of the fractions are not equivalent to

You must show your working.

_______ and _______

(b) Here are two fractions.

3 2
5 3

Explain which is the larger fraction.

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18. Explain why the 1st of April is always on the same day of the /5
week as the 1st of July.
19. Spinner A has 6 equal sections and spinner B has 8 equal
sections. Each section of the spinners contains the number 1, 2
or 3. All three numbers appear on each spinner.
Write numbers in the spinner sections so that:
 a score of 1 is more likely on spinner A than spinner B,
 a score of 2 is more likely on spinner B than spinner A,
 a score of 3 is equally likely on either spinner.

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20. Daniel wants to buy a laptop.
Two shops sell the same make of laptop.

Daniel wants to pay the least amount of money for his laptop.
Which of the two shops should Daniel buy the laptop from?
You must show all of your working.

/4
21. Last year Kerry’s take home pay was £15 000
She spent 40% of her take home pay on rent.
She used the rest of her take home pay for living expenses, clothes
and entertainment in the ratio 3 : 1 : 2
How much did Kerry spend on entertainment last year?

£__________
/4
22. Robert is in hospital. He takes a pill every 6 hours. He has some
medicine every 8 hours. He has an injection every 12 hours. At 08 00
on 10th July, Robert took a pill, had some medicine and an injection.
At what date and time will Robert again have all three together? You
must show your working.

____________________________
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23. Angela earns £35 240 a year. She has to pay income tax. She is
allowed to earn £6475 before paying tax. She pays 20% tax on the
rest. Her employer deducts the income tax each month. Work out how
much income tax Angela gets deducted each month.

/4
24. Lottie has a bag of apples. She gives half of them to Fred. Fred eats
two and then has four left. Use algebra to determine how many apples
Lottie had at the start.

________
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25. A customer who cancels a holiday with Funtours has to pay a /5

cancellation charge. The cancellation charge depends on the number
of days before the departure date the customer cancels the holiday.
The cancellation charge is a percentage of the cost of the holiday.
The table shows the percentages.

Number of days before the Percentage of the

departure date the customer cost of the
cancels the holiday holiday
29–55 40%
22–28 60%
15–21 80%
4–14 90%
3 or less 100%

The cost of Amy’s holiday was £840. She cancelled her holiday 25
days before the departure date.
(a) Work out the cancellation charge she had to pay.

£____________

The cost of Carol’s holiday was £600. She cancelled her holiday and
had to pay a cancellation charge of £480.
(b) Give the range of the number of days in which Carol cancelled
her holiday.

__________________
26. Viv is training to keep fit. One part of Viv’s training session is a
40 second run followed by a 2 minute walk. She repeats this run and
walk 5 times. Before doing this, she does some warm-up exercises for
10 minutes. Afterwards she does a 10 minute cooling down exercise.
Viv started this training session at 12 30
(a) At what time, to the nearest minute, did Viv finish her training
session?

________________

To help her training, Viv has energy drinks. She buys a pack of 12
energy drinks for £9.18
(b) Work out the cost of one energy drink. Give your answer correct
to the nearest penny.

£________________
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27. An equilateral triangle has a perimeter of
12 cm. Two of the triangles are joined
together, edge to edge. What is the new
perimeter?

________ cm
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28. Mr Williams is organising a school trip. Going on the school trip
there will be
 134 students from Year 8,
 125 students from Year 9,
 and 30 adults.
Mr Williams must hire enough coaches so that everyone on the
trip has a seat. All the coaches that Mr Williams can hire seat 54
people. What is the smallest number of coaches that Mr
Williams has to hire? You must show all your working.

_______
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29. Janice asks 100 students if they like biology or chemistry or
physics best.
 38 of the students are girls.
 21 of these girls like biology best.
 18 boys like physics best.
 7 out of the 23 students who like chemistry best are girls.
Work out the number of students who like biology best.

_______
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30. A piece of wire is 60cm long. It is bent into a
shape that consists of three identical
squares. How long is the side of a square?

________ cm
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31. The three points, A,
B and C, on this
graph are equally
spaced. What are
the co-ordinates of
point B?

( ____ , ____ )
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32. The letter ‘T’ on this square grid
has an area of 200cm². Calculate
the perimeter of the ‘T’.

________ cm
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33. Mr Shah is working out the cost of the electricity he used in /4

 April.

Mr Shah has to pay

20p for each of the first 70 units used in April
and 10p for each of all the other units used in April.

Work out the total cost of the electricity he used in April.

£ _____________

34. The length of a flight from Krakow to Liverpool is 2 hours 50

minutes. The 17 15 (Krakow time) flight from Krakow to
Liverpool is delayed by 75 minutes. The time in Krakow is one
hour ahead of the time in Liverpool. Work out the time (Liverpool
time), that the flight is due to arrive in Liverpool.

_____________

There are 228 passengers on the flight. Two thirds of the

passengers did not have a meal during the flight. How many
passengers had a meal during the flight?

_____________
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35. A length of tape is 135 centimetres long. It is cut into two pieces. /3
The first piece is twice as long as the second piece. How long is
the shorter of the two pieces of tape?
 ________ cm

36. Mrs Long has to buy 270 chocolate biscuits. She finds chocolate
biscuits at 3 different shops.

Shop A Shop B Shop C

9 biscuits in a pack 18 biscuits in a pack 27 biscuits in a pack

£1.80 per pack £2.50 per pack £2.60 per pack

Buy one pack and get Buy two packs and get
one extra pack free one extra pack free

In which shop are the biscuits cheaper? You must show your
working.

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37. The diagram shows a wall in Vicky’s living room. /5

 Vicky plans to wallpaper this wall. She buys some rolls of
wallpaper.

Each roll of wallpaper is 53 cm wide and 12 m long. The cost of

one roll of wallpaper is £12.45.

Work out the cost of wallpapering the wall.

£ _____________

38. T-shirts normally cost £12 each. Two shops have a special offer /5
on these T-shirts.
Stephen wants to buy exactly 30 T-shirts. Work out at which
shop, Stephen will get the better deal. You must show clearly
how you got your answer.
39.

The diagram shows three identical rectangles that have their

sides parallel to the axes.
(a) What are the dimensions of each rectangle?

__________________

(b) Find the co-ordinates of point C

( ____ , ____ )
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