The answers, explained
From Harry Potter to the Space Shuttle: puzzle #15, explained
Seven numbers, seven stories. Here is the thinking behind every answer in Range Squeeze #15, and where to read more.
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This article explains the answers to puzzle #15, so it unlocks once Wednesday 21 October 2026 is over.
Play today’s puzzle Past answersHow many books are in the Harry Potter series?
7 books
One book for every school year
J. K. Rowling planned one book for each of Harry’s seven years at Hogwarts, from his first term at 11 to the final battle at 17.
Why do the books get so long? The first, Philosopher’s Stone, runs to about 77,000 words. By Order of the Phoenix in 2003 the story had grown to around 257,000 words, the longest of the seven.
The last book, Deathly Hallows, followed in 2007. It was split into two films, so the seven books became eight movies.
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How many lives does a cat proverbially have?
9 lives
Nine lives, or seven, or six
The saying is centuries old. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio calls Tybalt the “King of Cats” and threatens to take one of his nine lives.
Why nine? Nobody knows for sure. Nine was a lucky, magical number in many traditions, and cats really are good at surviving falls thanks to the righting reflex, which turns them feet-first as they drop.
Not everyone agrees on the count. In many Spanish-speaking countries a cat has seven lives, and in Turkish and Arabic sayings it has six.
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In what year did Princess Diana die?
1997
A princess remembered
Diana, Princess of Wales, died in Paris on 31 August 1997, at the age of 36. Her funeral a week later was watched by an estimated 2.5 billion people around the world.
Why did she matter to so many? Diana used her fame for causes others avoided. She shook hands with people living with HIV when many wrongly feared it spread by touch, and she walked through a minefield in Angola to campaign for a ban on landmines.
Elton John rewrote his song Candle in the Wind for her funeral. The new version became one of the best-selling singles of all time.
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How old was Tiger Woods when he won his first Masters?
21 years old
Twelve shots clear
Tiger Woods won the 1997 Masters aged 21, the youngest champion in the tournament’s history. He finished 12 shots ahead of the field, still the biggest winning margin at Augusta.
What does the winner get? A green jacket. Champions can take it home for a year; after that it stays at the club, waiting for them whenever they return.
Woods went on to win the Masters five times. The last came in 2019, 22 years after the first.
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In what year did Netflix start streaming films online?
2007
From envelopes to streams
Netflix began streaming films and TV shows online in January 2007. Until then it was a rental service that posted DVDs to subscribers in red envelopes.
Why wait ten years? When Netflix started out, home internet was far too slow for video. Broadband had to spread first, and even then the first streaming library was tiny: about 1,000 titles, against more than 70,000 on DVD.
Its first big original drama, House of Cards, arrived in 2013. The DVD service kept going until September 2023, when the last red envelopes went out.
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How many prime numbers are there below 20?
8 primes
Eight numbers that won’t split
A prime number has exactly two factors: 1 and itself. Below 20 there are eight of them: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17 and 19.
Why isn’t 1 prime? It has only one factor. Leaving it out keeps a useful rule tidy: every whole number above 1 can be made by multiplying primes together in exactly one way.
Primes thin out as numbers grow, but they never run out. Euclid proved that there are infinitely many of them more than 2,000 years ago.
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In what year did the first Space Shuttle fly into space?
1981
A spaceship that came back
The Space Shuttle Columbia first launched on 12 April 1981, exactly 20 years after Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space. Its two astronauts, John Young and Robert Crippen, circled the Earth 37 times in just over two days.
What made it different? Earlier spacecraft could be used only once. The shuttle landed on a runway like a glider and flew again, and the five orbiters made 135 missions between them.
The last flight, by Atlantis, landed in July 2011. Today Discovery is on display near Washington, D.C., and Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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