Are you as smart as a 9 year old?

Nikolas is taking an ICAS math test tomorrow, which is an international test (Australia, NZ being the biggest participants). He took some practice tests at home, and some of the questions were very tricky.

Here's an example:

"Emma wrote a 5-digit palindromic number. Its first and last digits add up to 8. The rest of its digits add up to 7. How many different numbers could Emma have written?"

or

"Five counters are overlapped and arranged in a row. The area covered by the five counters is 31 units. Two of the counters are removed, and the area covered by the remaining 3 counters is 19 units. What is the area of one counter?"

Can you guys figure those out?

He did fine on these, and did really well on all of the puzzles, but he got frustrated over a question about puppies who were born close to midnight, and he was completely convinced that 12:00 am should follow 11:59 am, and wanted to shout me down over that one. Hey, it's not my fault that the 12 hour clock definition sucks, and it should have been done differently! Oh well. He felt better about himself once he realized that he was comparing himself with some of the best and brightest math whizzes, and he really isn't an idiot after all. I'm sure he'll do fine.