One third of twelve if you divide
By just one fifth of seven,
The true result (correctly tried)
Exactly is eleven.

How is this possible?

Numerically, combining 3, 12, 5 and 7 with just multiplication and division doesn't seem to make it possible to come up with 11.

Perhaps it's really a word problem, with one third of "twelve" being "el".  But the extra "even" is 4/5 of "seven", not 1/5.  Besides that, taking "divide" literally, we'd have to separate the third taken from "twelve" to surround whatever we take from "seven".

 

Posted by Charlie on 2004-03-24 08:35:39