Did you fly off on a holiday this year? Several people flew their solutions to NRICH and there was quite a variation amongst them. If you didn't try that problem, why don't you go back to it and see if you agree with one of the answers below. If you disagree, perhaps you can decide what you would do differently to solve the problem and let us know.

Tim, from Room 15 at Eastwood Primary School in Australia, wrote that his favourite problem in July was A Flying Holiday. Tim's solution was that the bird flew in a south-easterly direction for ten meters.

Do you agree? Let's see what other readers thought.

Venura, Christopher and Rizqi of Gwynneville Public School, also in Australia report that, "The answer to the flying holiday is 40 minutes going north-east!"

They then add, "How did we do it? ...

The bird first flew 20mins due north and then 50 minutes in a due north-west direction.

After that it went south for 20 minutes.

To solve the problem, we first drew a map of where the bird flew.

Then we tried finding out the speed and time between the 'gap'.

Finally, we figured out that it took 40minutes from when it started and had to return in the direction due north-east."

Well, what do you think? Perhaps you don't agree with either of those solutions. How about a different suggestion?

There were 3 groups of people: Anita and Jing-Jing from Kilvington Girls' Grammar School in Australia, Rodrigo and Thomas, from St Mary's School in Lancashire and Mithran V., who is also from Australia, that arrived at the same answer: 50 minutes for the journey south-east.

To help them solve the problem Rodrigo and Thomas used grid paper and connected lines Mithran V. must have done the same, because Mithran says that the lines formed a parallelogram.