[post=11986491]My post here[/post] inspired me to propose this math game.
I used to watch a French game show called “Numbers and Letters”. One of the challenges in the game was called “The count is right” - you are given certain numbers and through four arithmetic operations (subtraction, addition, division, multiplication) you try to come as close as possible to a target number.
Rules
[list=A][li]Take 6 (working) numbers at random from the following set: 1 through 10, 25, 50, 75, 100 (each number from 1 to 10 can appear up to two times in your set of 6 - pretend you are drawing from a set of tiles like this: 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 25, 50, 75, 100)[/li][li]Pick a (target) number at random between 100 and 999[/li][li]Using +, −, ×, ÷ and the working numbers drawn in step A, try to get as close as possible to the target number drawn in step B[/li][/list]
In this medium, I propose that it would work this way:
[ol]
[li]Someone proposes a challenge[/li][li]The winner is the first poster to get exactly the target number from the working numbers[/li]OR
the person with the closest result in the first 5 posts following the challenge (in case there is no exact solution)
[li]Winner proposes a new challenge[/li][li]The person proposing the challenge doesn’t get to try to solve their own challenge[/li][/ol]
Example
working numbers 3, 75, 2, 4, 1, 1
target number 888
75 - 1 = 74
3 × 4 = 12
74 × 12 = 888
First challenge
working numbers 9, 75, 8, 3, 8, 2
target number 798
P.S. If someone knows of an existing application (e.g. a web form) that solves these types of problem, please let me know, then the game would become kind of pointless unless the participants promise not to use the automated solver.