Brainhurter
It took me more than 5 minutes, and I resorted to pen and paper, although even once I’d solved it I failed to grasp the true elegance. I’m curious to know if small children are indeed better at solving…
PS you should try to solve it before reading any of the comments!
(copied from here)
Took me about the same (maybe a little longer). I can see how being a programmer might make it harder because you’d know a larger set of things it _could_ be, but isn’t.
less than 3 seconds, pretty much the time it took to check if i was right… wont describe why until everyone has a shot.
didn’t actually even read the description.
There are 21 examples, so you checked 7 per second? Impressive.
Felt like what I hear people describe as synesthesia, Which I don’t recall ever feeling before.
I’ve always had the ability to look at maths problems and have my brain do nothing but hum a tune quietly to itself – in the past this has not served me well.
Sounds like the elegant solution jumped straight out at you (and you can guess why there are no 4s on the left side of the equation)
maths certainly didn’t get in the way on this occasion.
and by checking I mean checking in the same way you check to see if there are 3 or 4 objects – not by counting but just looking at the shape.
I don’t see any elegance in this puzzle. Maybe there are multiple solutions and I’ve hit on an inelegant one.
Ah, I see now.
Pbhag gur ahzore bs pybfrq pvepyrf va rnpu ahzore. rvtug unf gjb, juvyr mreb, fvk, naq avar rnpu unir bar
(From the original’s comment thread. Encoded in ROT13.)
Reminded me of years ago when Mark was describing to me how he mathematically worked out if a shape was closed or not [for graphics programming purposes]. Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem which is similar to me. These are both super-elegant but strange.
Yep it’s rather nice, here is a spoiler for those who are curious:
http://intepid.com/media/2012/07/solution.jpg
that spoiler is pretty close to exactly how I saw/see the original image except fuzzier highlighting.
Took me about 3 minutes, mostly to realise that despite it being numbers I had to actively route around any attempt to do maths to them.
About 5 mins for me. The preschooler thing was certainly a big clue, but it still took me a while to force myself not to approach it as a numerical puzzle.
20 seconds for me. it was the ’6666′ that gave it away for me.
Less than 10 seconds for me. I wonder how long it might have taken without the description though – it was the preschooler thing that made me think immediately of shapes.
5 minutes for me…but I am wondering whether I didn’t get an alternative solution after Edam’s comment on shapes…
Actually, I never noticed the shapes, but solved it correctly mathematically anyway…