I bought a new calculator at the Dollar Store and, sure enough, it’s defective. After some trial and error with it, I discovered that each digit in the display contained the same two pairs of elements (out of the seven elements labeled A to G below) that were somehow ‘cross-wired’. That is, if one element was called upon to illuminate, its partner would illuminate instead. If both were supposed to illuminate, neither would! For example, if A/D and B/F were the faulty pairs, the number 3 would simply display as F/G/C, as illustrated below.
Based on the illuminated elements for each digit given below, find the faulty pairs to then solve the following 3-digit by 2-digit multiplication:
| C/D | F/B/G/E/C | G/E/C |
X | | F/G/C/D | F/G/E/C/D |
F/E/C/D | F/G/C/D | F/G/E/C/D | F/E/C/D |
(In reply to
re(4): problems with computer program by Robby Goetschalckx)
Interesting exchange on computing issues with this problem (little of which makes any sense to me! :). Robbie has both solved the multiplication, and finally identified the actual faulty element pairs. Just one small thing though (a typo. perhaps) with respect to his '1' (normally BC), that he's indicated as BD. Since BD are indeed one of the faulty element pairs, for any particular digit, only one would be illuminated or both would be 'out', but they'd never illuminate together. For 1, the CD indicated in the problem is correct.