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| Ahh Carol http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/tvandradioblog/2008/jul/28/cancountdownsurvivewithout |
Last night on my train ride home I failed to write anything.
This was because I was stuck on a maths problem, and couldn’t get past it to start writing.
The puzzle was in the Evening Standard and it went like this…
2 – 17 – 3 – 9 – 35 – 70 Use all of those six numbers in any combination of + - X or / (I don’t seem to have a proper divide symbol) that you can, to make the answer 754.
You have thirty seconds to answer this…
GO!!
Go on try it – you only have thirty seconds so stop wasting time reading this nonsense and get on with it!
I sat for over an hour trying to solve this puzzle with a pen and with my counting tongue sticking out. I got nowhere at all.
This morning, freshly rested and breakfasted, I decided to try again – this time with a little help from Mr. Gates.
Yes I cheated – well kind of.
I still had to find the solution myself; I still had to work it out. I just let Excel do the counting for me – because the other people on the train were complaining about my socks being off.
Even though I used Excel to help me count past 11 (the highest number I can usually achieve using my toes) it still took me about ten minutes to solve the puzzle.
THIRTY SECONDS!
What kind of robotic mind can possibly work that fast? Carol Vorderman I am clearly not.
How did you get on? Have you solved it yet? How long did it take? So far the reigning champion is me, and I took a total of one hour twenty minutes, and used a posh calculator to find the answer…
Can you beat that?
P.S. Yes I know the answer is 754 – I told you that, now go away and find out how get solve the puzzle!
10 comments:
Thirty seconds? That's crazy. It took me thirty seconds just to understand the problem.
30 SECONDS!!
I can do many many things in 30 seconds. One of those things is devouring two mars bars.
A maths problem, is apparently not one of them.
Professor was mocking me just yesterday about my less-than-primary-school intellect yesterday, so when I saw this, I saw my chance to bring him down a peg.
Armed with nought but a pen, a piece of paper, and his Rainman-like brain, Professor solved it in 2 minutes 44 seconds.
Now we're off to the casino ;)
You've created a monster Glen. Given another few minutes, he has come up with another solution to the problem. We could be here all day.
He is almost salivating at the pleasure of this. It's disturbing.
Should I post the solution, and anyone who can read it in 30 seconds wins?
Haha! Don't know what the solution is, and DON'T CARE!!!! But ... if I'd spent my 30 (+++) seconds solving it, I wouldn't have had time to comment on your blog. So you tell me - what's more important??
Are you kidding me? My brain is about to explode just thinking about how to solve it. It's just not worth the clean-up involved. I'll stick to my abacus. I don't know how to use it, but it sure is purdy.
You're evil, Glen.
This is like when someone asks you to name the Seven Dwarfs, and you can only get to six, and you spend the next few hours of your life worrying over the name of a Fictional. Dwarf.
oh great. Sleepy 18 yo son worked it out in about 3 minutes, give or take.
Bet he can't name the dwarves, though.
EW! Math! I took all the hard Honors math classes in high school but hated every minute of it. So happy my husband loves it!
Math gives me a headache.
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