Comments on: Brain Game: Line Up!

By: Blake

Blake — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:35:00 +0000

I went about solving #1 and #2 in a different route. I took the liberty of adding the “+” sign to the sum of both sides of the equation. They’re assumed to be positive, right? I then subtracted 267.5 (the average of the 2 sums) to get “-267.5 = 267.5″. I simply added my line to the left to flip the negative sign into a positive one. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get my sign flipping trick to work on #3. I felt my math trick of adding/ subtracting the same number from both sides was fair. But, if the instructions had “only” in them, it would have been a different story.

By: SteveO

SteveO — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:17:00 +0000

The directions were fine Sandy. Rotation is a form of movement. I suppose one could write explicit rules for all puzzles and remove all creativity and independent thought. That would be fun!

By: Sandy Wood

Sandy Wood — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:28:00 +0000

I guess I could have said “remove a line from the left side and add a line to the right side” — but it just seemed simpler to say “move” it.

By: Sandy Wood

Sandy Wood — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:24:00 +0000

Hmmmm… the instructions don’t disallow rotating the lines. To specifically say “rotating is allowed” would have been too much, I think. Tough call, though!

By: PartiallyDeflected

PartiallyDeflected — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:57:00 +0000

Sorry Sandy, your solution to number 3 is bogus. Your instructions do not allow rotating the line. You’d wind up with 5416 on the right.

By: Sandy Wood

Sandy Wood — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:27:00 +0000

Understood, John. To be clearer, I added a parenthetical phrase to the instructions to ensure that readers refer back to the original image when solving each of the three puzzles. Thanks!

By: John

John — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:16:00 +0000

Ahhhh… that’s the same answer I was getting, but then I reread the instructions and I thought we were supposed to be using the solution for #1 as the start for #2, and the solution for #2 as the start for #3. Then my brain imploded from thinking too much with too little caffeine. Thanks…