• she/they/whatever

no pun zone

portrait drawn by @MLeeLunsford


lea
@lea

So I was looking through my bookmarks and I came across a really good Quora post (a good Quora post, that's crazy) that explains how to solve this. It scares me.


lexyeevee
@lexyeevee

i love this stupid image but it is wildly deepfried and this is COHOST where we can DO BETTER

🍎 🍌 + 🍍 + 🍌 🍎 + 🍍 + 🍍 🍎 + 🍌 = 4

...

OK WE CAN'T DO BETTER BECAUSE COHOST STRIPS MATHML

NO PROBLEM CSS GRID CAN DO ANYTHING

95% of people cannot solve this!
🍎🍌 + 🍍 + 🍌🍎 + 🍍 + 🍍🍎 + 🍌 = 4
Can you find positive whole values for 🍎, 🍌, and 🍍?

or with mutant emoji:

95% of people cannot solve this!
red applebanana + pineapple + bananared apple + pineapple + pineapplered apple + banana = 4
Can you find positive whole values for red apple, banana, and pineapple?

(incidentally, if you don't like following quora links — the joke is that it looks like a viral facebook math problem, but the smallest solution is a set of three 80-digit numbers. so yes, it is quite accurate to say that 95% of people cannot solve this. number theory is buck wild)


DecayWTF
@DecayWTF

I am generally Good at math but this shit is so fucking beyond me. That Quora post is an adventure.


DianeThePunk
@DianeThePunk

God I saw another one of these on twitter a while back that involved finding very specific pythagorean triplets and it turned out that the solution was only found in the past decade.

Also I hate to say it, but CSS grid apparently cannot QUITE do everything.


namelessWrench
@namelessWrench

Just because 95% of people can't solve it doesn't mean the other 5% can.


undeniableEmG
@undeniableEmG

correctly asserts that all solutions are contained within the other 5%,


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in reply to @lea's post:

in reply to @lexyeevee's post:

The first time I saw this, I didn't click on the quora answer, and instead delved headfirst into trying to find a solution. I didn't get the answer, but I got: apple, banana, pineapple = 140737488355328, 703687441776640, 3167377265024775 which gets you sooooo close, my computer doesn't have the precision to tell it from 4.

it isn't close to a solution though, but I thought it was cool

then i read the quora answer and realised it was way beyond me

in reply to @DecayWTF's post: