[Terretta]

The "edit distance" errors would seem to be the tell that yours is a better explanation, perhaps along with problems matching near-edit-distance numbers (tokens) in latent space.

In A operand B equals C any of the 3 numbers can compress to a same space as a 'close' number or numbers in some problem out in web space. So while the author googled the expressions he asked, I wouldn't expect those to be found verbatim when answers are wrong; rather, to your point, the author should web search for tokens, or web search for problems within, say, +/- 3 for each digit of tokens, in all permutations.