this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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Alt text: Five dices. Top left corner is a three, top right corner is a six, bottom left corner is also a six and bottom right corner is two threes forming a straight angle.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I’m now committed to getting this to work, but I’m not quite there.

(6^3) - 6 * 3 - 3 = 195 Beyond this, I’m quite lost on how this can be done with simple arithmetic.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

If you allow factorials:

6^3 - 6! / (3! * 3!) = 196

Edit: also 66*3 - 3!/3 = 196

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Factorials or something more than basic arithmetic (+exponents) is needed as I went ahead and programmatically checked every expression without parenthesis and the closest would always be 195. Interestingly, all values within a difference of 10 were multiples of 3.

A lost cause indeed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Interestingly, all values within a difference of 10 were multiples of 3.

If it's limited to basic arithmetic (+-*/) and no parenthesis, would there be any answer possible that's not a multiple of 3? My first thought is telling me that common order of operations would make any equation using the numbers in the OP and the restrictions laid out would always amount to a multiple of 3.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

That was my initial thought, but you can do add or sub by 2 (6 / 3) to get a non-multiple of 3. I had to double check and see that there were in fact values of i.e. x.5 within I think a difference of 64, can’t remember the exact values or their expressions.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Oh yep, my bad. It's always division that throws me in math expressions that have multiple steps to them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If we allow combining digits to make larger numbers (like kittehx's edit) we can actually do

(33*6) - (6/3) = 196

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

How did I not try that? Now I feel dumb lol

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)