h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

and would therefore be very obliged if someone could get 196757 to equal 42.

Here's some to keep you going.

( 1 * 9 - 6 ) * ( 7 - 5 ) * 7 = 42

How simple, thankyou so much!

Ok... I've given my number more than casual thought but I still can't get 69725 to work. It seems like it should be easy, well easier than 109000 leastways. But I give. If anyone can cipher mine for me I'll be most grateful.

CZ

69725:

-(6-9) x (7+2+5) = 42

Jeremy

I guess I always tried to work from the front. I never noticed the 14 at the end nor it's significance for this problem.

Wow

Thanks tons Jeremy.

They are all just to clever!

That's not really cleverness. It's just routine ...

After all, 42 is nothing else than 6 x 7, 3 x 14, 2 X 21, etc. ...

Once you have found a way to get 14 out of some of the digits, you just need to build 3 from the other ones ... (just to name one example) ...

Yea, I was basically trying a very haphazard approach of going like.

"let's see... six times nine is fifty four, erm... minus seven is... forty seven... no that won't work... six PLUS nine is...."

If I had thought of it more as a puzzle than a maths problem I probably would have got it. When I do a "puzzle" I've trained myself to break the puzzle down before I go any farther, which if I had done with this I think I might of gotten it.

Jeremy

I'm just lazy, but I was approaching it in much the same way as you.

CZ, an alternative for you is
6+9*(7+2-5) => 42

Pinwheel could go for
sqrt( 196*(7-(5-7)) )

Nah can't have sqrt...

But There is a 42ism in a DNA Stylee for CZ...

69725 = 6*9 + (7-2-5) = 6*9 = 42 in a DNA Stylee...

Welcome CZ and PP to the Club, take your seat (or your Pogo Stick if you'd prefer) at the DoQuaDecahedric table...

As you probably already know, 6*9=42 in base13. So I'm good with that.


Count Zero, 6*9+(7-2-5)=42(base13)

But you can use a square root, that one there was especially cool, but still square root is a perfectly good operation I think...

Square root is Number to the power of 1/2 ... So if you've got either a couple of numbers to make 1/2 with or a 5 (to turn into .5) you can do it... Otherwise you could say "Oh 2 cubed is 8, so that's alright..."...

(e.g. U000001 could then be (0!+0!+0!)! x ((0!+0!)[cubed]-1)=42...


But you just can't pluck numbers out of nowhere...

Oh, BTW correction to my earlier post... The table isn't DoQuaDecaHedric its DoQuaDecagonic.... My mistake

I am assuming that a DoQuaDecagonic table is 42 sided yes.
Since I have Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia that gave me the shivers.


Count Zero

It may be fear of long words but I think its just a joke...

Uh Oh... now my Geliophobia is kicking in.


Count Zero, who finds the phobialist website quite amusing. I'll stop now.

I found it 2 years ago and have been amused ever since. However I don't know what Geliophobia is.
I printed it once, no idea where its gone to.