What I don't get...

[Buffalobiian]

So do I have to use every single number?

I mean, I can do 25 - 6/6 = 24

And can I combine numbers?

like 256, 68 etc?

I'm suspecting you can, since if he's intentionally saying "you can only use about three signs, since there are four numbers", he's telling you the maximum, as there are 4 numbers, but didn't clearly say to use 3 signs.

Edit: What about powers? If you use pen and paper, 8^6 is written without a "sign".

[Xelbair]

No mathematical stuff other than those 4 sings and those numbers, no combination of those numbers etc - that is how i get - back to solving it. if its solvable i will solve it... but no idea when :]

p.s. if i can't "crack" it logically i will use pen and paper brutal force method.

[Buffalobiian]

I give up. I brute forced it last night

You've got one odd number, and three even numbers. Your final value 24 is an even number. The only way you can get an even from an odd is odd * even = even.

But using that doesn't get you anywhere neither.

[Xelbair]

lack of brackets annoys me deeply, but if its solvable i will do it(now i need to find another pen/pencil.. old one is dead)

[Nadouku]

Yea, we'll have to come back into this matter much later, since my friend is being cynical at giving me the solution to the problem. I'll inform you guys when he's being serious. The only thing that was close to 24 was 24.75 from doing 25 * 6 / 8 + 6.

[Assertn]

Yea, we'll have to come back into this matter much later, since my friend is being cynical at giving me the solution to the problem. I'll inform you guys when he's being serious. The only thing that was close to 24 was 24.75 from doing 25 * 6 / 8 + 6.

Cynical? What, were you taking advantage of him for his riddles or something?

[Buffalobiian]

I can only get 24 if I break the rules:

25 - 8^(6/6)

[Buffalobiian]

Was it the mermaid or her human form you wanted to ravage?

If you wanted to do it with a fish i can understand it but if you wanted to do it with a cartoon character then you're just sick dude.

PS: Taking gotwoot seriously gives you brain tumors

...........

How is a fish okay, but cartoon not? I don't get it.

(...I'm getting the shivers just imagining a blowjob with a fish......)

[XanBcoo]

It's a joke, Buff. He said something intentionally ludicrous, a statement which contradicts that which you would expect him to say, in order to illicit laughter from you, the reader.

[Nadouku]

He was being cynical because he gave out the wrong information to me. One of the more notable erroronous information was that the number 25 is actually 0.25, and that you can use each mathematical sign more than once. So, here are the new rules:

- You can use brackets.
- You can only use the numbers 0.25, 6, 6, and 8 once.
- You can only use the signs +, -, *, and /, but you can use them more than once.

[Abdula]

Well that makes getting 24 easy
6+6=12
12*8=96
96*.25=24

[Nadouku]

Here's mine:

(6+6)*(8*0.25)
12*2 = 24

Almost the same as Abdula's, but took a slightly different route. There seems to be a lot of ways to get 24 now with this different set of rules.

[Buffalobiian]

Lol, I think he was just screwing with you. This is hardly a riddle now.

[Xelbair]

with brackets is piece of cake (wo)man...

Your gender is still a mystery to us

[Buffalobiian]

Louse is to lice as mouse is to mice. So, why is the plural of house....houses?

[XanBcoo]

Louse is to lice as mouse is to mice. So, why is the plural of house....houses?

Ugh, I should be able to answer this off the top of my head, but I can't.

I'm pretty sure it has to do with The Great Vowel Shift in the English language and just the changes made from Old to Middle to Modern English in general, but I'm too tired to remember the specifics.

I think the older forms of those words would have been different, but changed over time. Some, like house and spouse, didn't change, and some, like mouse and louse, did. I'll give you a more thorough answer when I can.

[KitKat]

Ugh, I should be able to answer this off the top of my head, but I can't.

I'm pretty sure it has to do with The Great Vowel Shift in the English language and just the changes made from Old to Middle to Modern English in general, but I'm too tired to remember the specifics.

I think the older forms of those words would have been different, but changed over time. Some, like house and spouse, didn't change, and some, like mouse and louse, did. I'll give you a more thorough answer when I can.

Well, I'm a bit late to this question but....other forum resident linguist to the rescue!

Xan, as far as I know, the great vowel shift was a phonetic/phonoligical change, whereas the matter of plurals is a grammatical change. From what I've learned in historical linguistics, English used to have a number of different ways of marking plurals (woman-women, child-children, mouse-mice, sheep-sheep, word-words). Each of these different strategies was used for a certain subset of words, but the -s class was the largest, so over time when people forget what kind of plural a word takes, they make a guess that it takes the -s version. Multiply this by hundreds of years, and you see the -s plural taking over most of the words, and only a few words holding on to their old archaic plurals. Incidentally, the ones that don't change tend to be ones that are used very frequently (like woman and child) whereas the first ones to change are typically words that aren't used so much.

[XanBcoo]

Well, I know that "mice" and "lice" and so on exist because of a phonological change. I may be slightly wrong, but I think the forms were something like (singular first, then plural):

[mu:s] - [mu:si]

and then after time, the [i] from the plural caused the [u] to move farther forward:

[mu:s] - [mysi]

and then at some point the GVS or some other change happened and then the [i] was lost in the plural, resulting in the forms we know today. I think it was something like that at least??

[mu:s] - [mi:s]

[maus] - [mais]

I'm still curious as to why it would affect some words and not others, especially since "house" is such a common word.

[KitKat]

I'm still curious as to why it would affect some words and not others, especially since "house" is such a common word.

I think it depends on the order that the processes occurred historically. If the plural [i] was lost before causing the vowels to move forward, that would explain it. I couldn't be sure though without looking at some historical data to be sure that 'house' actually did take the same kind of plural as 'mouse' in the past.

[Stitch]

I don't get why the fuck you're wasting your time worrying about the singular and plural forms of words based in the inherent quirkiness of the english language.

That's what I don't get. Why don't you go use your mind to find the cure for HIV so I can fuck your dirty ass without a condom?

What a Godawful post. Don't do this again. Warned
- XanBcoo