Puzzles

Some lateral thinking puzzles. See how many you can solve.

WINNIG WAYS 

Greg and Tim go to their local tennis club and play three tennis matches. Both win and lose an equal number of matches. How is this possible, given that you cannot have a draw in tennis match?

SQUARE NUMBERS

The squares on a board game are numbered consecutively from 1 to 99. In total, how many sixes and sevens are there on the board?

WATERGATE

A man goes to a swimming pool and swims 50 lengths of breaststroke. The pool measures 25m (82ft) long and 12 m (39ft) wide. It is 1 m (3ft) in the shallow end then after 15 m (49) it shelves (at an angle of 45 degrees) to a depth of 2.5m (8ft). How much water is required to fill the pool?

APRIL FOOL

What can be seen in the middle of March and April that cannot be seen at the beginning or end of either month?

POOR VISIBILITY

On the day that the president Nixon took office he held his first meeting in a south –facing room at the White House. It was daylight and it wasn’t rainy nor was it foggy yet, when he looked out the window, he couldn’t see the top of the Empire State Building. Why not?

Past tense - irregular verbs

You can download a free Part Tense Irregular Verbs Worksheet (in PDF) 

Interesting verbs...

The following verbs can be regular or irregular:

Verb	Past Simple	Past Participle
burn	burned OR burnt	burned OR burnt
dream	dreamed OR dreamt	dreamed OR dreamt
learn	learned OR learnt	learned OR learnt
smell	smelled OR smelt	smelled OR smelt

The second form (burnt, dreamt etc.) is more common in British English.

Easy to remember?

Verbs that have the same form in Present, Past and Past Participle form:

Verb	Past Simple	Past Participle
bet	bet	bet
broadcast	broadcast	broadcast
cut	cut	cut
hit	hit	hit
hurt	hurt	hurt
let	let	let
put	put	put
quit	quit	quit
read	read	read
set	set	set
shut	shut	shut
spread	spread	spread

All of the verbs above are written and pronounced the same in the three forms EXCEPT for Read which is written the same but pronounced differently.

Activities

Here are some interesting activities from a useful website to practise the past tense.

Past simple activities

Simple Past Tense, Past Participles & To Be - Past Tense

You can check the answers to this worksheet here: Past Tense Irregular Verbs Answers.

(Adapted from www.grammar.cl)