if you saw it on a phone i hope it came out okay, @question_asker, sure did wear out my back`quote key

oh I just saw it on the site - I went to look at the actual formatting to see if there was anything spicy in there. there was, but not in the way I was expecting

I'm asking for one simple answer: Is Base 10 a correct assumption?

That is one direct question

It was tagged lateral thinking. That puts Q&A into play.

The letters spell out G = in terms of G if that means anything.

@ChrisCudmore I was commenting on the directness more than the questionness :)

And I think this is significant: "No leading zeros in Whollywood, even among random bad seeds."

Well, if G is a set, and that set contains G, we end up with Cantor's definition of Infinity. - The Cardinality of a Set that is it's own proper subset.

But, if G = some infinite value, then .G is meaningless.

right

I'm thinking numbers may not be the way to go, at least not initially or in terms of G

but! I don't know that; I'm just saying it based off the way I've thought about the puzzle before and what that entails

I also think that 'no leading zeroes' implies that .G != 0.G

if that makes sense

or could also mean that i != 0

aye, aye

Taken as .G == 0.G, the lower equation is unsolvable in integers 0-9.

The only thing that sort of works is b=2, i=5. Which would force G =20 (Which on second thought, might not be incorrect)

but also, 'lateral thinking' and 'anonymized self texts'

could be, it doesn't specify that G is a single digit

Of course, we all know G = 6.674×10^−11

haha

if you want some lateral thinking, we can move B.i to the left side

B.i.G = i

i am big

(I didn't know that, but when somebody says a math identity I believe them)

ooh

It Was Biggie Smalls!

damn

people want to stick him for his paper

OK so rereading I realize I need to take back some of what I said. Or at least take back the intent of it

intermsofg is an anagram of Fingers Tom

hmmm

And finger is in the title.

that almost came out as hmmn, which is almost our OP

Not that that gets us anywhere.

yeah so I was (almost definitely) reading too much into the 'lateral thinking' bit, because I now see that the letters are (as far as I can tell) each supposed to correspond to a single 0-9 digit

the other symbols, though, probably mean something other than what they look like they mean

Is there an implicit multiplication in the first line?

(sorry if I'm miles behind everybody else right now - I have to say this 'out loud' to get it 'on paper', while I mix metaphors very badly)

Fair enough.

Does the Capitalization matter?

Even/Odd? Integer/Whole?

yeah that's what I'm trying to figure out.

while the puzzle itself says (basically) that each letter corresponds to a number, I feel like we're supposed to be doing something with the letters. inter Ms of G Minters of G <-- I like the B.i.G idea from earlier but this is all just me throwing possibly-wrong ideas out

What if the first line refers to an infinitely repeating sequence of digits.

If there were a decimal point in there, I'd definitely go with that.

Go ahead and throw out bad ideas. It's not like we have any good ones.

Random question...

This puzzle, asking to re-open. Does it seem really obvious to anyone else?

Maybe i'm just missing something about the trick.

unless there's something else going on there (i.e., if I, too, am missing the trick), it seems like a straightforward algebra question, to me

looks like algebra to me, too

Right - I mean it seems like the answer is obviously that the book is $10

Though, in this case, I can almost see how this is a puzzle.

It qualifies as a puzzle, per the site, because it's not immediately obvious what the answer is - but only for a moment.

But definitely algebgra.

yeah. there are people arguing over regional currency denominations, but it would be a trivial change to the puzzle to say "this is in the US", and then it would definitely, 100% be just plain old algebra

true

yeah, I guess I could see it being tricky because Ha Ha one of them has $0

and there's no lateral thinking tag, so I think the currency issue is silly

but that's... a boring trick

Yeah, that's what I was seeing

exactly

I'm unsure of how to vote on this ones reopen request, lol

Does "if the sisters combine their money" imply that both of them have > 0 amounts of money

I wouldn't say so

If everyone in the world combined their money.....I wouldn't say it implies everyone has money

true

I mean, it would be silly to say "I'm combining our money" if I have $0

but it wouldn't be "untrue", really

True, lest you are being silly, or tricky

yeah, what KK said

Sorry to interrupt your puzzle, though

yeah. again, unless there's some aspect that I (and, apparently, everyone else) don't see, this strikes me as a very solid example of the kind of math problem that understandably gets closed here.

One thing that I looked into on it, btw, but didn't get anywhere with...

like "ten years ago, john was half sally's age..." type puzzle

Fingers are called digits, and can be indexed, but have different letters than the numbers. (For example, no number 0-9 has an 'M' in the word, but the middle finger does..)

yeah

In case this helps - though I don't think it does:

i = index
N = 9
t = thumb
E = 8
r = ring
M = middle
s = 6
O = 1
f = 5
B = baby

hmm

that's definitely more lateral than we've been thinking so far...

Yeah, that's why I tried it

the title made me think of that, but I wasn't sure where to go with it

no luck, though

I think you still might be on to something, though

How do we distinguish left and right.

Caps and lower

I don't htink do, because s is lower

And would be on the same hand as N and E

Also, for reference..

(also: I'm considering re-bountying the Karen puzzle, but it costs 200 this time)

Just in case it helps, visually

hmm

i = 2 or 9
N = 9
t = 0 or 1
E = 8
r = 4 or 7
M = 3 or 8
s = 6
O = 1
f = 5
B = 5 or 6

I put 100 on it

Unfortunately, there's no place for B in that idea, because both 5 and 6 are taken by non-optional numbers.

unless r = 7, and f = 4

good point

in that case...

why is s 6

and not 7

i = 2
N = 9
t = 0
E = 8
r = 7
M = 3
s = 6
O = 1
f = 4
B = 5

Because it won't work that way.

also i think you added the optionals starting at 1 instead of at 0

No, indexes are 2 and 9, in the image above

thumbs would be 0 and 1

so youre treating 10 as 0 then?

It does assume that we number the fingers starting at 1 - though that is the general tendency

yeah

Go ahead and try it with the optionals starting at 0 and see if you're able to get it to come up with something, though

You're a hero once again, Cudmore

Why?

The bounty?

the bounty

yeah

NP. It's only fake internet points.

I think you gave it the first view it's had in 3 days

lol

I think people are daunted by the amount of information in it.

I'd've given up more of my fake internet points if I knew it would get an answer this time

that's what I'm "paying for"

Though if it was a real (non-game) puzzle, then it would have looked similar to this.

It might be too hard, though

I..uh....need to go find my notes to remember how to decode a part of it.

lol KK that algebra problem just came up for me

good ol skip button

what ideas did you come up with for the image name?

Actually, I think I remember now.

for the karen puzzle

that always reads to me as "can I get a touchdown, doctor?"

lol

I never even noticed the typo

I wonder if @Matt did

I wonder if Andy is still hitting refresh every 30 minutes..

haha

OK so this digit puzzle (hinted at this earlier): do you suppose there's any significance to the way it was formatted?

(i,&nbsp;N, t, E, r, M, s, O, f and&nbsp;B)

$\kern166mu$ G &emsp; = &emsp; i N t E r M s O f G

etc

maybe there is no significance, and it was just super meticulous formatting - I know humn has been playing around with the posting sandbox

must be some reason he didn't use mathjax

or straight text

But I know nothing about the commands he used

oh I forgot to escape all the backticks

but each letter is individually backticked

yeah

for giggles, btw, I attempted to solve using those numbers, from earlier

The result isn't very useful

tiger-algebra.com/drill/x:0.5=2/x.2

And of course, it doesn't explain 5 = 2908736145

Actually I made a mistake, there -- the last digit is G, not B - and we haven't figured out G yet.

However, using .x = 2 / 5.2 gives an x of 38461538461, which is just as arbitrary

Could it just be G = 123456790123456790... & 1/8.1 = .1234567901234... or am I missing something

That's along the lines of what I'm thinking.

But there are only nine digits in intermsof

So leave one out, and try them all.

Now do it 9! times for each missing digit.

There are only 9 digits in 123456790 as well

since B (8) isn't present.

ahh. Font confusion. I thought that was a B in the lower equation.

Post it as an answer.

Ah, I see what you mean, Will - makes sense

And I don't know why I found that "Saphe" puzzle so amusing.

Yeah, that's almost certainly correct, Will. It works out well.

Would it bother you if I changed that to mathjax so it can have an overline?

Not at all

I'm amused, though -- You just looked at that and the answer popped into your head, didn't it?

It did.

Haha

Nice job

I don't know why I knew that 1/81 = .012345679 repeated (which is how I got the 8.1)... but I knew it

Why is this fact in my head

Hahaha, I know the feeling.

Not one I have in my head, but I used to know several of those =D

I'll post this here, instead of as a puzzle comment.

....So can we assume that 'G' is a runaway?

haha

haha, thank you - I didn't know how to space that

Oh wait

I guess the whole gang is runaways

or it's a gang full of clones

Back to work, with me...

this

this was how I knew

hah

@HughMeyers I completely missed your chess puzzle. I like that one - very nice.

@ChrisCudmore The only 9 letter words that end in shot appear to be:

Bloodshot
Grapeshot
Midrashot
Slingshot
Slungshot
Undershot

Grapeshot and Slingshot would both fit as a question for the final answer (though there's no definitive answer, aside from possibly David for the slingshot) but I can't make them fit the clue for the 5 letters.

Unless (and I'm hoping this is NOT it) "shook hump" is somehow rape

Of course, it's completely possible that it's just a 5-letter word there, and not a multiword

Yeah, I tried that already.

I was thinking "THUMP' (T - At Cancelled Beginning) + HUMP.l

But it doesn't match "Shook" in that it's not the correct tense or form to be a synonym

oh wow y'all

nice work on the finger puzzle