On Friday I posted this puzzle…..
What value should ‘x’ be in the following sequence?
16 06 68 88 x 98
If you have not tried to solve the puzzle, have a go now. For everyone else, the answer is after the break!
If you turn the sequence upside down you get….
86 x 88 89 90 91
so the missing value is 87!
Did you solve it? Any other solutions?
I have produced an ebook containing 101 of the previous Friday Puzzles! It is called PUZZLED and is available for the Kindle (UK here and USA here) and on the iBookstore (UK here in the USA here). You can try 101 of the puzzles for free here.
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May 23, 2011 at 5:34 am |
Seeing as your answer is upside down, you haven’t quite answered the question correctly. The real answer should be L8.
May 23, 2011 at 5:34 am |
I would say that the answer is L8 !
May 23, 2011 at 5:35 am |
Shouldn’t that be L8 (87 upside down)?
…and since I believe in honesty I admit that no, this one I didn’t get
May 23, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Dito…
May 23, 2011 at 5:42 am |
I agree with the previous comments.
The answer should be 87 upside down which doesn’t have a real value therefore it is not the proper answer.
May 23, 2011 at 6:17 am
That’s why I didn’t think the answer was satisfying. Ah well, sometimes it’s not only out of the box thinking but also out of the box looking.
May 23, 2011 at 9:33 am
I stand by the fact that a string is a value
May 23, 2011 at 5:43 am |
I am beside myself now .
How obvious does the answer and all the clues need to be.
This was at me all week end.
Well played Mr Wiseman.
May 23, 2011 at 5:44 am |
My answer was also “L8″, although I think a better answer would be “87 written upside down”
May 23, 2011 at 5:52 am |
Tried turning my iPhone upside down to see this… Doesn’t work, does it? The screen flips!
May 23, 2011 at 1:17 pm
Hold it face up, then turn it as you would a compass.
May 23, 2011 at 3:07 pm
Freeze your Iphone first. Double click and slide the bottom menu to the right. Then Lock the button on the lift and the screen will not flip
May 23, 2011 at 5:53 am |
I got 87 as well, but only after reading some of the clues about “point of view” etc. That were posted on Friday. I also agree that a better answer would have been “87 written upside down.”
May 23, 2011 at 5:56 am |
crazy! i didn’t try this way for obvious xD
May 23, 2011 at 6:22 am |
I am proud to say I got this one but only because I’m lazy and on Friday was reading it in bed so was already reading it sideways.
May 23, 2011 at 6:29 am |
I agree that this puzzle doesn’t work because 7 doesn’t have an upside down variant.
As 2 works upside down (more so in some fonts than others), I think a working sequence could be: 26 16 06 68 88
May 23, 2011 at 6:42 am |
Richard should have written l6 in the question instead of 16, otherwise it is a good one. I didn’t get it.
May 23, 2011 at 7:22 am |
I think I got it right, but I didn’t know hiw to type a 7 upside down
May 23, 2011 at 7:33 am |
Good one, Richard. I wasn’t even close.
May 23, 2011 at 7:43 am |
It should have be L8, as everyone else has said!
May 23, 2011 at 8:49 am |
You asked for the missing value in this sequence: 16 06 68 88 x 98
Not this one: 86 x 88 89 90 91
Answer should be L8!! 87 is simply wrong!
May 23, 2011 at 8:50 am |
I got 88.
If you swivel each digit of 68 you get 98, which is on the other side of x
So I swivelled 88 to get 88.
May 25, 2011 at 3:38 am
I did the same thing.
May 26, 2011 at 3:45 am
I agree with you that that would work, but only if there were four digits to the riddle: 68 88 x 98. The 16 and 06 would basically serve no purpose, otherwise. Nice thinking though!
May 23, 2011 at 10:57 am |
I thought the best answer was ’48′, but this depends on how you write your 4. Mine is basically identical to an upside-down 7, with a short line through the top of the 7.
May 23, 2011 at 2:45 pm
I cross my 7s too and decided that the crossed L (Libra) was best …..£8
May 23, 2011 at 11:07 am |
I’d say it’s 10, 20 and 30. You have to extract them from the next number.
That’s what I see in it.
May 23, 2011 at 11:08 am |
yup – consensus – the puzzle is a cheat, answer is wrong.
May 23, 2011 at 7:54 pm
Not really a consensus, I don’t think. Plenty of people enjoying the answer.
May 23, 2011 at 11:11 am |
Okay, I was wrong. But that does fit for the first two. 16-6=10, 88-68=20.
98-x=30, which makes x=68
May 23, 2011 at 11:44 am |
According to http://www.fliptext.net/, the answer should be ㄥ8.
Or should I say:
87 ǝq plnoɥs ɹǝʍsuɐ ǝɥʇ ‘/ʇǝu˙ʇxǝʇdılɟ˙ʍʍʍ//:dʇʇɥ oʇ ƃuıpɹoɔɔɐ
May 23, 2011 at 6:45 pm
˙ʇsıqnɔ ʇıq ɐ sʇǝƃ puɐ pɐdǝʇou oʇuı ʇxǝʇ uʍop ǝpısdn ƃuıʇsɐd ʎɹʇ ¡¿ʞɹoʍ uǝʌǝ ʇı sǝop ʍoɥ ˙looɔ ʎllɐǝɹ sı ʇxǝʇdılɟ ˙ʍoʍ
You can copy upside down text in and it puts it right way up again. Awesome!
May 23, 2011 at 2:35 pm |
I was sorely tempted to make a bunch of puns on Friday about lateness, the White Rabbit and so on, but that would have been pushing the limits. Anyone who used to do calculator puzzles would get this right away.
May 23, 2011 at 4:23 pm |
I did get this on Friday after about 5 minutes of telling myself it wasn’t a simple math problem. However, as other commenters have pointed out, 87 is *not* the correct answer.
May 23, 2011 at 4:39 pm
Technically yes, but saying “87″ is a sure indication that one took the mental leap to solve the puzzle. Enough to pass a recruitment exam, say.
May 24, 2011 at 1:47 am |
87 can be the correct answer without being upside down. The puzzle is to find x; the x in the sequence could be upside down just like the numbers. If this were the case, 87 would be the correct answer.
May 24, 2011 at 2:21 am |
I got stuck thinking it was the number of loops used in writing each number, that sequence starts 1,2,3,4.. Never got as far as turning it upside down.
May 25, 2011 at 8:58 pm |
I’m happy. I got this one quite quickly after reading some of the comments and having an epiphany. Confess if I hadn’t read the comments I would probably have been scratching my head.
May 26, 2011 at 2:20 pm |
I guessed that the numbers could be turned upside down but didn’t think that through far enough to get the correct answer, never mind there’s always next week!
July 2, 2011 at 7:20 am |
Sorry, a bit late on this one. Another solution to this puzzle you might find amusing is the following:
With x=24344
the given sequence (16 06 68 88 x 98) is the same sequence of numbers in pi starting at the 48,796,848th digit (counting from the first digit after the decimal point).
e.g. See:
http://www.angio.net/pi/bigpi.cgi
and search for 16066888 then find the next 98 by eye. The numbers between give x.
As you might imagine, this is not a coincidence nor magic, but rather almost statistical certitude since the digits of pi are (essentially) random for all practical purposes. The sequence 16066888 occurs roughly where you expect a random 8 digit number to occur in a large sequence. However, it is actually a lucky coincidence that that 98 occurs within a few digits of the last 88 so can be seen quickly by eye.
Although perhaps cute, this is a kind of cheater solution because any arbitrary sequence can be found in this fashion in principle (not just limited to pi, but e, sqrt(2), and other large quasi-random sequences).