Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by dxbydt 1566 days ago
Quite hard dude! I'm still going at it. Once you put down an equation like 100x3=300, your mind becomes committed to it...which biases your future choices & quickly leads you down the wrong path. Awesome game. Pls compile stats on average solve time. I'd be interested to know how long it takes to solve the daily summle on average (aka how dumb am I compared to rest of population )

You have +,-, * ,/. But no ^. Why ?

I used to ask a^b * c^d=abcd as an interview question. In most programming languages its a 4-line nested loop to find the unique solution.

3 comments

It becomes much easier once you factor the number, rather than trying to narrow in on the answer

Light spoiler: gurer vf n fbyhgvba juvpu qbrf abg hfr bar uhaqerq

That's true if the solution is a product, not a sum.
Start with the product solutions, and if nothing seems pliable, start backwards and work with the sum results.

For the hard one, 612 is not an easy number to find, but basic math shows that 6+1+2=9 so the number is divisible by 3 (and I won't go any farther to prevent spoiling it) Finding a system by which you create the situations that allow the operands and factors to be discovered while also flexing your basic math skills is the fun of the game.

re 612, gjryir unf znal snpgbef fb fvk gvzrf uhaqerq znxrf sbe n avpr erznvavat qvfgnapr
Fvk Uhaqerq nyfb unf znal plcuref ohg fbyivat jurer gb trg gur guerr sebz vf gur ovttrfg pyhr
^ seems like it would get spaghetti fast - multiplication's already not easy to visualize and something like 12^6 which involves two numbers that are 'low' by the game's standards, becomes a ridiculously high number. I mean might as well add some other operations if you'll do that right?
I wanted to keep it to operators everyone would understand, though it would be interesting to use exponents!

I am only recording successful attempts, which for the regular puzzle is around 33% so far today. I might compile stats on solve time too.