Personally, I love puzzles! Whether it’s a maze, a word jumble, or a math problem, nothing beats the satisfying feeling of solving a riddle once and for all!
That said, I have to admit that my strengths definitely lie with word problems. Sure, give me a crossword any day, but anything like this bus problem that requires all sorts of logic and spatial reasoning skills? I probably never would have figured it out without sneaking a peek.
And when it comes to good old-fashioned math problems, well, I’ll give it my best shot, but all bets are off! Math that’s kid-friendly is fine, but anything even a little bit more complicated is totally baffling to me.
That’s why I was thrilled when I thought I had solved this cute and clever “fruit arithmetic” problem on the first try. Unfortunately, I quickly discovered that this problem isn’t as straightforward as it seems!
Were you able to solve this problem on the first try, or were you as stumped as I was?
This fruity brain-teaser has everyone stumped! Can you figure out the answer?
Think you have the answer? After you've examined the riddle, scroll down to see how it works!
The basic concept seems pretty simple at first. Each piece of fruit is worth a certain number, and identical pieces of fruit are worth the same amount.
We don’t know what those numbers are, but we can tell the first one easily with some very basic algebra skills.
If 3 apples add up to 30, then 1 apple must have a value of 10.
The next step is a bit more challenging.
We now know that 1 apple plus 2 bunches of bananas equals 18.
Since 1 apple is 10, we know that the 2 bunches of bananas must equal 8.
Divide 8 in half, and you get 4, the value of 1 bunch of bananas.
The next piece of the problem works roughly the same way.
This part tells us that 1 bunch of bananas minus 1 coconut equals 2.
Since we know 1 bunch of bananas is 4, it’s pretty simple to figure out that the coconut must have a value of 2.
All pretty simple, right? And we thought the next step would go the same way, just adding up the values of the different fruits as we go to reach the sum total.
Knowing what we now know, here's the full problem again to refresh your memory:
Since we know that an apple is valued at 10, a bunch of bananas is valued at 4, and a coconut is valued at 2, the combination of those three fruits must add up to 16, right?
We thought so, too, but we were wrong…
Take a close look at the bananas and the coconut in the final equation; they look just a tiny bit different…
Upon closer inspection, you’ll notice that this bunch has only 3 bananas in it, and that the coconut has been cut in half!
Ready to take a look at the correct answer? Click the image below!
Because of the change to the coconut and bananas, we have the change the values that we assigned.
The bunch of bananas, previously valued at 4, loses a quarter of its value (or 1 banana) — and is now valued at 3.
The coconut, cut in half, loses half its value — and now has a value of just 1.
That means that the final sum of those three fruits is not 16, but actually 14!
Check out this key to the see the break down of all of the different fruits!
Using the math above, we still know that an apple has a value of 10.
But now we have also figured out that a single banana has a value of 1, meaning that a bunch has a value equal to the sum of all of the fruits in the bunch.
Meanwhile, half a coconut also has a value of 1, which means that a whole coconut has a value of 2!
Whew, we sure are glad we aren’t in math class anymore!
Were you able to solve this problem immediately, or did you get stuck the same way we did?
Let us know your results, and don’t forget to SHARE on Facebook to see if your friends can figure it out, too!
