Difficult puzzles, brain teasers and conundrums

Puzzles, riddles, brain teasers, conundrums, logic questions in pictures. All the logic questions here are more difficult than the average in other sections of the site. You will most likely need more time to complete them than usual. But you can look at the answers and explanations for all these logic riddles, brain teasers and conundrums. To check your answer, click on the «Answer» button located below the task. After this, the correct answer and explanations will appear. Below you can select other questions on this topic. Typically each topic has 20 questions or more. At the same time, the complexity of logical problems gradually increases. First there will be easy questions, then medium, then difficult. Try to complete tasks as quickly as possible.
Question - 20
This challenging riddle-conundrum features 9 square cells, each containing 13 squares and 3 circles. The circles change their location according to some rule. Some cells have another very small circle, yellow or blue. You need to understand the logic behind the placement of images within the nine cells. Next, indicate the correct answer to substitute the question mark.
Correct answer = 3.
Here is an initially simple scheme. There are 16 squares. Instead of the first three, circles are placed at the top left. These three circles move downwards with each step. Having reached the bottom, the circles move to the next column from above and so on. See explanatory image below. The sequence of steps is shown by numbers from 1 to 9. In addition, in each column and in each row there are two images flipped 90 degrees. One image is flipped clockwise and is indicated by a small blue circle. The other image is reversed counterclockwise and is indicated by a small yellow circle. One image is not rotated and does not have small circles.
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