Maria's Puzzle Book Reloaded [Puzzle 26]

E is exponent, you used square root and 100/2 = 50, so 1*10^50
I think it’s pretty much solved if we can make googol out of the sticks, but I ll let usagi or kari do that since they figured it out first

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Right. It’s possible with the image turned 180 degrees. Just did it, but don’t want to steal credit now. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Inb4 Vyse arrives claims its wrong and we cant flip image and gogool is not the answer, I don’t know why but I feel this might happen :cackle:

Here’s a disclaimer :

  1. Vyse fails at drawing sticks.
  2. Usagi fails at alphabet

No argument there that 2) is worst.

In any case :

The (9) is something I fully deserve.

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And there we go, you got the solution! Meaning I’ll soon post puzzle 24.

How much did one have to pay for christmas lights at the end of october, before professor Evilowski raised the value-added tax the first time?

value-added tax

What’s that :sweating:

I think my math is off, but if it isn’t, then it’s either 112 Evilar or 124 Evilar.

102 isnt it? Hard to do fully mentally tho Ill check that back home.

The thing is that the percentage points don’t fully match up. if adding ten percentage points adds 8 Evilar, then doubling it should add 16. However, that doesn’t add up to 140, it adds to 124. 20 percent of 140 is 28, and if you subtract that it would logically go to 112. Vyse, do the percentage points stack, or are the two increases separate?

Correct. From the first increase we know that the price without VAT is 80 Evilar. Having the price for both without and with VAT, we can then calculate the VAT itself after both increases, which is 75% since 140/80=1.75. Therefore, the VAT before doubling was 37.5%, and before adding 10 percentage points it was 27.5%. Now we can calculate the price of a christmas light, which is 80*1.275=102.

@FlareNetworkC The second raising of the tax was doubling the entire thing, not just by the amount it was increased before.

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Ah, I see. I am powerless in the face of the NepNep.

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I sorta didn’t bother to calculate actual % btw.

Just like…
8x10 = 80
140-80 = 60
60/2 = 30
30-8 = 22
80+22 = 102

Ah, you went with the value that the VAT increased the price by at each state.

I kinda want to ask you guys one of those maths riddles just to mess with you a little…

You have two numbers, which multiplied together equals 579 201 525.
The average of these two numbers is 24 837.
What are these two numbers?

This may be either very easy or really unfair btw. I’m actually more interested in seeing how @akafa123 would solve this, sorta to see which of the two methods is more efficient (assuming it’s another one…).

This does not require any form of binary search. A basic calculator and a piece of paper should do

I simply used high numbers to prevent anyone from solving it by trying out all the possibilities, so using a program that would do so is not the right way.

By average, you mean the mean of the two numbers, correct?

Yes.

Actually I’ll add something else in the post.

It’s very frustrating that googling 579201525 comes up with no search results, no matter how I google it.

Ughhhh this is why only having learned up through Algebra 1 is frustrating. I probably could solve it if I’d have gone through Algebra 2 and Calculus yet. The drawbacks of only being a sophomore.

x+y= the average of two number*2
you can do it the long way here

xy=579201525
x=579201525/y
((579201525/y)+y)/2=24837
(579201525/y)+y=49674
(579201525/y)+y-49674=0
579201525+y^2-49674y=0
y1=30975
y2=18699

x1=579201525/30975=18699
x2=579201525/18699 =30975

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