I think that I originally got stuck in the same place that you did. I got past it by writing out all of the equations that I thought were necessary, and finally resorted to just blindly assigning numbers that obeyed those equations. Then I went back and checked whether the puzzle added up. When it didn’t, that showed me the critical equation that I had missed, which let me solve the puzzle.
I don’t use equations like that very much (well, maybe sporadically) because it’s too hard to keep them all in mind. Instead, I use an elimination matrix (or several). Only I got to a certain point where I had eliminated ALL the possibilities for some of the letters. Oops.
Elimination matrices, without equations at all, are also used for entirely non-numeric logic puzzles. Here is an example:
[quote]
Five sisters all have their birthday in a different month and each on a different day of the week. Using the clues below, determine the month and day of the week each sister’s birthday falls.
[ol][li] Paula was born in March but not on Saturday. Abigail’s birthday was not on Friday or Wednesday.[/li][li] The girl whose birthday is on Monday was born earlier in the year than Brenda and Mary.[/li][li] Tara wasn’t born in February and her birthday was on the weekend.[/li][li] Mary was not born in December nor was her birthday on a weekday. The girl whose birthday was in June was born on Sunday.[/li][li] Tara was born before Brenda, whose birthday wasn’t on Friday. Mary wasn’t born in July.[/ol][/li][/quote]
The most elaborate word arithmetic problems are those long-division problems that you see in crossword puzzle books. The same kind of elimination matrix works for those, along with the occasional equations relating some of the letters.
S e n d + m o r e = m o n e y
9567 + 1085 = 10652
Second grade. Question asked of children living in the middle of New York City on standardized test:
“Which animal doesn’t belong? Cow, horse, deer, goat.”
I considered saying the horse didn’t belong because it wasn’t kosher, then it dawned on me that the horse was the only one without horns or antlers, so I said “horse.”
I got it wrong. The correct answer was deer, because the other animals all live on a farm.
could it be :
0+0=0?
goose egg = zero
Layed an egg = nada
EGG upside down would be 663 btw
:smack:
I’d have said horse because it’s the only one with one toe. Aren’t cow, deer, and goat all two-toed?
I’d have said cow, because all the others could be either gender.
Perhaps deer aren’t farmed in the US (though I have seen deer as wild animals on a farm in the US), but they are farmed in Australia.
Yes – cows, deer and goats belong to the order of even-toed ungulates (Artiodactyla), while horses belong to the odd-toed ungulates (Perissodactyla). A zoological taxonomist would say that horses are the odd ones out (in two senses of the word “odd”).
It was deer because that was the only word that didn’t contain the letter o.
A good example of a question with multiple legitimate answers.
That one seems poorly-constructed as well, because it is assuming that only the months and days that are mentioned in the puzzle exist. If they had use verbiage like “Tara was born before Brenda, whose birthday wasn’t the one on Friday” instead of “Tara was born before Brenda, whose birthday wasn’t on Friday” then it would have been accurate, since knowing that Brenda was not born on Friday does not mean that someone else was.
This puzzle is easy, just define it as a type with the addition type class/trait.
struct Egg;
struct QuestionMark;
impl Add for Egg {
type Output = QuestionMark;
fn add(&self, _: &Egg) -> QuestionMark {
QuestionMark
}
}
Actually the sentence as written carries more info than the sentence you propose.
As written it means
A) Tara’s birth month precedes Brenda’s birth month.
B) One sister was born on a Friday.
C) Some sister (ambiguously Tara or Brenda) was not born on Friday.
Your reformulation eliminated fact B. Which may be a crucial fact. Often good puzzles of this style include subtle facts in addition the obvious ones. The folks who skim past the subtle facts and don’t recognize them often get stuck.
I love the fact they couldn’t manage to write 8 simple SVO-pattern English sentences without using an ambiguous construction in one. Although I suppose it’s possible the ambiguity was deliberate as a subtle[sup]2[/sup] clue. But I seriously doubt it.
Both of these tidbits also show up the importance of editing and the danger of incautious editors tweaking the sentences to “read better” without fully understanding the significance of each tidbit of direct and implied meaning in each one.
My bottom line:
Morons. We’re friggin’ surrounded by friggin’ morons! This ignorance fighting thing is darn hard work. 
Yes, which is part of why they are kosher (cloven-hoofed).
You could also say horse because it’s the only one normally used for riding.
Horses are also the only non-ruminant in the list. That might be co-valent to the cloven / not distinction. Beyond my detailed knowledge of taxonomy.
No, “cow” is the generic term for any individual of some type of domestic cattle, irrespective of age or gender. (It can also refer specifically to such individuals that are mature females.)
Just as “dog” comprises both (male) dogs and bitches, and “goose” comprises both (female) geese and ganders, “cow” comprises both (female) cows and bulls.
Clearly this should be goat, as only the goat has a beard. It’s the devil’s animal, to boot.
I meant to say obviously the answer is deer. It’s a term of “endearment”, while being called “goat” or “cow” are insults. Being called a “horse” is usually an insult, unless you are a football player.
There are some cloven-hoofed animals that are not ruminants, like pigs. Since they don’t “chew the cud,” this makes them non-kosher.
So I’m right back to Rivkah’s original thinking, just stated in different terms. 
All righty then. Does the <EDIT> function not work?
I would like to correct my error.
EGG = 993 Upside down. Where did anyone come up with 8?
There are posters in this thread still trying to suss out the EGG puzzle as a typographical puzzle?