# The Mysterious Multi-Purpose X

I was on my computer last night and I happened to be thinking of something very useful to me that I will call X. I was hungry so I added 15 to it like this:

$15 + X$

That did the trick. Later on, I wanted to go for a walk. I added 14 to it:

$X + 14$

And enjoyed my walk very much. It made me think of my childhood home. There were gooseberry, raspberry, and red currant bushes in the backyard. My backyard is too small for that. Obviously, the solution was:

$X + 13$

When I arrived back home, those memories made me feel lonely. Once again, X to the rescue:

$12 + X$

It had been an eventful evening. I had trouble sleeping. Instead of counting sheep, I decided to try a more complicated sum. I tried adding:

$11 + X + 13$

But I fell asleep before I got the answer.

I had the strangest dream. I dreamt that

$10 + X$

is male but

$X + 10$

is female. When I woke up, it I found it was true.

What is X?

• is X a real number? – ABcDexter Apr 13 '16 at 9:18
• @ABcDexter X is not a real number. – Hugh Meyers Apr 13 '16 at 9:35
• I am tempted to say that 11 to 15 represent the letters from K to O, but I cannot find a word that could be combined with all of those. – fffred Apr 13 '16 at 10:26
• @fffred I was trying the same with B to F, since the numbers might be a hexadecimal representation, but I haven't been able to find anything either... – Wu33o Apr 13 '16 at 10:29
• @fffred Same here. + doesn't seem to be commutative, so it might be a concatenation, and X might be a string of characters. – Bolo Apr 13 '16 at 10:48

X may be:

LAN

I needed Wu33o hint for this

11 = B, 12 = C, 13 = D, 14 = E, 15 = F

Giving the words:

Flan as hungry
Lane for walk
Land for larger backyard
Clan for family/friends to overcome loneliness
Bland so will not be excited and will sleep.

• Caught me just as I was adding a hint. Well done! – Hugh Meyers Apr 13 '16 at 11:06
• Nooooo, I was so close! Good job :) – Wu33o Apr 13 '16 at 11:15
• Addendum answers: Alan is a male name, Lana is a female name – David Starkey Apr 13 '16 at 15:01
• You missed just the male/female hint, which is easy: just make 10 = A (for completeness, it is hexadecimal representation). – Chaotic Apr 13 '16 at 15:02