Below are some matchsticks arranged to display an expression.
Your task is to remove one matchstick so that the resulting value of the expression will be twelve.
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Sign up to join this communityBelow are some matchsticks arranged to display an expression.
Your task is to remove one matchstick so that the resulting value of the expression will be twelve.
Remove the top of the 7. The 8 can be viewed as 13, so $13-1= 12$. Which also means that you can make it equal to $13-7=6$ without moving any matches!
Demonstration:
Here is another fairly lateral one:
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If we interpret "-" as difference of shapes then the result is a small "c" which is, of course, the hexadecimal for 12.
Possibly a little too lateral but if we
Remove the middle match from the '8' to make a '0'
And then
Look at the image inverted
We get
which could be interpreted as
L - 0 = L and since L is position 12 in the alphabet, this can be interpreted to evaluate to 12.
A bit of a stretch, but here goes:
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The only way to read the thing on the left as a number is as a 1 and a 9 who haven't heard about social distancing rules. So that will read 19-7.
Japanese borrowed the English word dozen as ダース (dāsu). Remove the bottom left match and you get:
_ _ |_| _ | | | |
which is ダース in a rather crappy low resolution font (especially the su is really ugly)
My swing at it:
Remove the middle bar from the 8. It’s now D hexadecimal. Minus 1 is C which is 12 base 10.
In very lateral thinking, let "remove one matchstick" be interpreted as "re-move one matchstick", which means to move one matchstick again. So move the top right matchstick to the windowsill. Then re-move it to the middle of the puzzle so it reads B + 1, which in hexadecimal is 11 + 1, which is 12.
Remove the middle stick on the left. Then you get "0 - 7" which equals 12 (mod 19).
Move a stick from 8 and place it over '-' to make a '+'.
Next remove a stick as shown to get 5+7=12.