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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1$\begingroup$ Just to be clear. Remove--- not Move right? $\endgroup$ – DrD Oct 9 '20 at 18:10
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$\begingroup$ There are so many possibilities... $\endgroup$ – user69881 Oct 10 '20 at 2:25
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1$\begingroup$ I love how many answers the people on this group have come up with to what is essentially an impossible problem! $\endgroup$ – Dr Xorile Oct 11 '20 at 18:04
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2$\begingroup$ There seem to be a lot of different answers here, and no reason to particularly prefer any of them. (Several of the other answers seem more plausible than the accepted one.) $\endgroup$ – Deusovi♦ Oct 11 '20 at 22:09
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$\begingroup$ @Deusovi Thanks,but I did not accept the answer just because I preferred it. I only accepted it because it was what I had in mind in the first place. $\endgroup$ – risky mysteries Oct 12 '20 at 0:47
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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:
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2$\begingroup$ "Without moving any matches" yet you had to move two matches to make it work! $\endgroup$ – Weather Vane Oct 13 '20 at 18:22
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1$\begingroup$ Next puzzle: Turn 8 into 13 without touching anything $\endgroup$ – Helena Oct 20 '20 at 16:37
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Here is another fairly lateral one:
If we interpret "-" as difference of shapes then the result is a small "c" which is, of course, the hexadecimal for 12.
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1$\begingroup$ difference of shapes, hexadecimal, you seem to have very flexible interpretation of the assignment ;-) $\endgroup$ – TMS Oct 11 '20 at 20:49
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1$\begingroup$ @TMS Don't say flexible, please. I prefer the word "lateral" ;-) $\endgroup$ – Paul Panzer Oct 11 '20 at 22:20
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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.
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1$\begingroup$ But, but, but... if the left is an L shouldn't the right be an O (the letter, not the digit)? $\endgroup$ – Paul Panzer Oct 9 '20 at 23:32
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$\begingroup$ I also had this idea, but usually people would use $A$ for $10$, $B$ for $11$, etc. $\endgroup$ – WhatsUp Oct 9 '20 at 23:33
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1$\begingroup$ @WhatsUp Actually, my first inclination would be that L=50 $\endgroup$ – hexomino Oct 9 '20 at 23:34
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1
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3$\begingroup$ Actually, the more I think about it the more I like it. The "-0" does a decent job of killing the L=50 association. This almost resembles something intentional ;-) $\endgroup$ – Paul Panzer Oct 10 '20 at 0:22
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A bit of a stretch, but here goes:
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.
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$\begingroup$ @bobble Just squint a bit ;-) --- I said it was a bit of a stretch. And I wouldn't have posted this if the other answers were any more compelling. $\endgroup$ – Paul Panzer Oct 9 '20 at 23:04
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$\begingroup$ So your final result is $3$... Also you don't have to remove any stick to read it as $19$. $\endgroup$ – WhatsUp Oct 9 '20 at 23:11
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$\begingroup$ @WhatsUp The point is that with the bottom in place there is no reason at all to read it as anything but an 8. With the stick removed I can't think of any plausible way of reading this as a number other than the one I suggest. $\endgroup$ – Paul Panzer Oct 9 '20 at 23:18
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$\begingroup$ You could read it as "1 - 7" just as easily as "19". $\endgroup$ – chepner Oct 10 '20 at 18:47
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My answer is
Invert the image
Remove the match which is (now) bottom right
This leaves two charactersLand@
In ASCII encoding, the difference in their values is $12$
Similar to other answers, but "sticks" to a single coding scheme.
answered Oct 11 '20 at 11:14
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Remove the lower-left stick on 8.
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Japanese borrowed the English word dozen as ダース (dāsu). Remove the bottom left match and you get:
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which is ダース in a rather crappy low resolution font (especially the su is really ugly)
answered Oct 9 '20 at 19:38
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6
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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.
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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.
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Remove the middle stick on the left. Then you get "0 - 7" which equals 12 (mod 19).
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$\begingroup$ Can't understand how this is correct if we are taking mod $19$ like that way. $\endgroup$ – Anonymous Oct 11 '20 at 4:29
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$\begingroup$ @Anonymous Minus seven is congruent to twelve mod 19. $\endgroup$ – Rand al'Thor Oct 11 '20 at 6:45
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$\begingroup$ It is, but why are we considering mod? in that case I would solve most of the matchstick problems like this, taking mod of a certain number, in this case, 19 $\endgroup$ – Anonymous Oct 11 '20 at 8:57
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Move a stick from 8 and place it over '-' to make a '+'.
Next remove a stick as shown to get 5+7=12.
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7$\begingroup$ If you are are allowed a preprocessing step, you could simply rearrange the matchsticks all you like before removing one. $\endgroup$ – chepner Oct 10 '20 at 18:48
