The Opinionist

In response to:And the answer is :-

Fri, 28 Oct 2005 13:37:47 +0200

Your perfectly correct, all those brackets weren't required. Yes, I think powers would also be allowed although probably only 1,3,4 & 6. I tried that and got no-where.
So nice to hear from someone with such a positive response. Nice one!!
I looked at your site. I used to write and translate Z80 games in the late 80's, Spectrum and Amstrad stuff. "Great minds", and all that.
Regards
Dan

In response to:And the answer is :-

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 14:30:15 +0200

I liked your solution, though I suspect you don't need all the brackets ((I'm too lazy to check!)) and am only commenting on the absence of ! from their puzzle. Presumably, raising a number to a power would also be an allowable function as it depends only on the position and size of the digits, rather than using a function symbol?

I congratulate you on finding a solution to a sloppily defined puzzle!

In response to:And the answer is :-

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 13:31:49 +0200

To the Walrus and any other interested parties,

I am new to the quiz and took the instructions literally. I have looked at last months quiz and pasted it in below.
------------------------------------------------------
In the last newsletter, I set you a Nubble puzzle :-

Using the basic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, construct the answer 1 by using all the numbers 1, 1, 1 and 5.

There are various solutions, such as 5x(1-1)+1=1.
------------------------------------------------------
So you see they have used brackets, and although they are not a function like ! is they weren't listed in the + - / and * signs either.

I don't know if it's the right way to do it but it got me the correct answer so I have entered into the quiz in the spirit of hope. If you like this sort of thing go to Simon Singh's website at http://www.simonsingh.net/ and join us.

Thanks for reading my blog and getting back to me.

In response to:And the answer is :-

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 08:36:54 +0200

"Using + - / * and all the numbers 6,4,3,1 make the answer 24"

But that has no "!" in it...