The answers, explained
From footballs to basketball: puzzle #16, explained
Seven numbers, seven stories. Here is the thinking behind every answer in Range Squeeze #16, and where to read more.
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This article explains the answers to puzzle #16, so it unlocks once Thursday 22 October 2026 is over.
Play today’s puzzle Past answersHow many black pentagons are on a classic black-and-white football?
12 pentagons
A ball made of flat pieces
The classic football is stitched from 32 panels: 12 black pentagons and 20 white hexagons. Each pentagon is surrounded by five hexagons, and no two pentagons touch.
Why that pattern? It is a truncated icosahedron, one of the shapes the Greek mathematician Archimedes studied over 2,000 years ago. Flat panels in that arrangement puff up into a very good sphere once the ball is inflated. Chemists later found the same shape in a molecule of 60 carbon atoms, nicknamed the buckyball.
The black patches made the ball easier to follow on black-and-white television. Adidas made the design famous with the Telstar, the ball of the 1970 World Cup in Mexico.
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How many baby teeth does a child have in a full set?
20 teeth
A set of twenty
A full set of baby teeth has 20: eight incisors, four canines and eight molars, shared evenly between the top and bottom jaws.
When do they arrive? The first usually breaks through at around six months, and most children have all 20 by about the age of three. They start falling out at around six, as adult teeth push up from below.
Baby teeth are smaller and whiter than adult teeth, with thinner enamel. Their roots slowly dissolve as the teeth underneath come through, which is why they work loose so easily.
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In what year did the first iPhone go on sale?
2007
The phone with one button
Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in January 2007, describing it as an iPod, a phone and an internet communicator in one. It went on sale in the United States on 29 June.
What was missing? Quite a lot, by today’s standards. It had no App Store, no video recording and no 3G, and it worked on only one American network. Apps from other companies arrived a year later, with the App Store.
Its big idea was the touch screen. Instead of a keyboard, almost the whole front was glass, with a single button below it.
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Roughly how many weeks does a worker honeybee live in summer?
6 weeks
Worked off their wings
A worker honeybee born in summer lives for about six weeks. She spends roughly her first three weeks inside the hive, cleaning cells, feeding young bees and making wax, then spends the rest gathering nectar and pollen.
Why so short? Foraging is exhausting. A worker may fly several kilometres on each trip, and her wings wear out. Workers born in autumn fly far less and can live for months, keeping the colony warm through winter.
The queen is the exception. She can live for several years and lay up to about 2,000 eggs a day at the height of summer.
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In what year did Nirvana release Nevermind?
1991
The album nobody expected
Nirvana released Nevermind in September 1991. Its opening song, Smells Like Teen Spirit, became an anthem almost overnight, and in January 1992 the album knocked Michael Jackson’s Dangerous off the top of the US chart.
Who saw that coming? Not the record company. It first shipped about 46,000 copies to American shops; the album has since sold more than 30 million worldwide.
The cover shows a baby swimming towards a dollar bill on a fishhook. The record carried the grunge sound of Seattle’s bands into the mainstream.
In what year did the Channel Tunnel open?
1994
Under the sea by train
The Channel Tunnel opened in May 1994, linking Folkestone in England with Coquelles, near Calais, in France. Queen Elizabeth II and President François Mitterrand opened it together.
How long is it? About 50 kilometres (31 miles), with roughly 38 kilometres under the seabed, the longest undersea stretch of any tunnel in the world. There are really three tunnels: two for trains and a smaller service tunnel between them.
When the British and French diggers met in December 1990, the workers shook hands through the gap.
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How many seconds does an NBA team have to bring the ball past halfway?
8 seconds
Get it over halfway
In the NBA, a team that wins the ball in its own half has eight seconds to get it across the half-court line. Taking longer is a backcourt violation, and the ball goes to the other team.
Why have the rule? To stop teams stalling. The NBA used to allow ten seconds, and cut the limit to eight in 2001 to speed the game up.
It works alongside the shot clock, introduced in 1954, which limits how long a team can keep the ball without shooting.
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A new puzzle arrives at midnight. Bring your best guesses.
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