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LostInParadise's avatar

Do you have a site where I can get the answer to Will Shortz's NPR puzzle?

Asked by LostInParadise (31915points) October 30th, 2016

Will Shortz gives weekly puzzles on NPR. Two weeks ago he gave a special two week puzzle for being able to form as many numbers as possible using the digits 5,4,3,2 and 1 in that order with +,-,* or / between then and allowing the use of parentheses. The answer is usually given to these puzzles, but since the solution to this one was so long, all that he said is that all numbers could be created except 39. I wrote a program to solve this, but was missing several numbers, so I would like to see what I did wrong.

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2 Answers

janbb's avatar

Maybe you can contact him through the NPR site?

LostInParadise's avatar

I never did find out how to get the puzzle answer, but I fixed my program to solve the puzzle. If any programmers are reading this, the puzzle makes a good programming exercise. I wanted to see how many numbers I could get without dividing. There was only one number that required a division operation. I also tried to see how many numbers I could get with only addition and subtraction. Do you see why the only possibilities are the odd numbers up to 15?

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