rookie1ja Posted March 30, 2007 Report Share Posted March 30, 2007 Fraction - Back to the Number Puzzles Can you arrange 9 numerals - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 - (using each numeral just once) above and below a division line, to create a fraction equaling to 1/3 (one third)? This old topic is locked since it was answered many times. You can check solution in the Spoiler below. Pls visit New Puzzles section to see always fresh brain teasers. Fraction - solution 5832/17496 = 1/3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 27, 2007 Report Share Posted April 27, 2007 I understand the solution. But how do you find it ? You can ' t test everything. Sorry for my poor english Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rookie1ja Posted April 27, 2007 Author Report Share Posted April 27, 2007 I understand the solution. But how do you find it ? You can ' t test everything. Sorry for my poor english A few hints: 1. first number must have 4 digits 2. second number must have 5 digits 3. second number must start with either 1 or 2 4. first number can not start with either 1 or 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 28, 2007 Report Share Posted April 28, 2007 Why must the second number start with 1 or 2 ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rookie1ja Posted April 28, 2007 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2007 Why must the second number start with 1 or 2 ? Because if you multiply a 4-digit number by 3, you can not get a number which is 30000 or bigger. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 28, 2007 Report Share Posted April 28, 2007 ok thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted May 2, 2007 Report Share Posted May 2, 2007 numerator is 4 digit, denominator is 5 digit, 5 must be in numerator and only feasible place is the thousands place, hence denominator must start with 16 or 17, denominator can't be 16*** because the ratio has to be 1/3 and only choices for hundreds place in numerator that are 4 and 6 will violate this condition or cause repetition, hence the number is 5***/17***, now hundreds place in num can be occupied only by 8 or 9, it can't be 9 or there will be repetition, so number is 58**/17***, now just simple hit and try on the ones and tens place of numerator will result in 5832/17496 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted May 6, 2007 Report Share Posted May 6, 2007 5823/17469 also works Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted May 25, 2007 Report Share Posted May 25, 2007 This one just about made my head explode. I took the same logical work down approach, but I couldn't get the last few numbers. I kept getting one repetition. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 20, 2007 Report Share Posted June 20, 2007 Wow, thanks for the answer. I'd been trying to use 1-9 on the top AND bottom of the problem until i gave in and had a look at the solution. Could someone check for me and see if all nine on the top AND bottom is even able to be accomplished. As far as I can tell, it's not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 5, 2007 Report Share Posted July 5, 2007 Fraction - Back to the Number Puzzles Can you use all 9 numerals - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 a 9 - above and below a fraction symbol in a random order, to create a fraction equalling 1/3 (one third)? If you systematically choose which order to place the numbers in, then surely you cannot call it a 'random' order. From this I deduce that Trial and error is the only way to solve this puzzle! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 9, 2007 Report Share Posted July 9, 2007 How bout 1^9756482 / 3. You never said not to use any mathematical operator.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 22, 2007 Report Share Posted July 22, 2007 3+6+9/(4+5)+18+27 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted August 6, 2007 Report Share Posted August 6, 2007 Wow, thanks for the answer. I'd been trying to use 1-9 on the top AND bottom of the problem until i gave in and had a look at the solution. Could someone check for me and see if all nine on the top AND bottom is even able to be accomplished. As far as I can tell, it's not. This is how I understood the question, and I found it's certainly possible. In fact, there are 768 occurrences of this. OK, I cheated and wrote a program to figure this out Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted November 13, 2007 Report Share Posted November 13, 2007 Hah. Oh. I guess I misunderstood the problem, because this is what I came up with: (1)(2+3)^0 (3)(4+5+6+7+8+9)^0 (which would of course reduce to (1)(1) (3)(1) or 1 3 I guess that's the lazy answer.) (You could distrubute the numbers in the parentheses raised to 0 any way you want, anything raised to 0 is 1.) edit: How bout 1^9756482 / 3. You never said not to use any mathematical operator.. Guess I wasn't the first person to come up with this ^^ I thought all the digits were supposed to be combined w/ operators, not as multi-digit number. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted December 31, 2007 Report Share Posted December 31, 2007 Can you use all 9 numerals - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 a 9 - above and below a fraction symbol in a random order, to create a fraction equalling 1/3 (one third)? Umm....by placing them in any set/given order would result in them no longer being placed randomly so I don't think it can be done. Unless of course the answer for any given combination of these numbers results in 1/3 which it does not. Just a little nitpick at the wording ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rookie1ja Posted December 31, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 31, 2007 Can you use all 9 numerals - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 a 9 - above and below a fraction symbol in a random order, to create a fraction equalling 1/3 (one third)? Umm....by placing them in any set/given order would result in them no longer being placed randomly so I don't think it can be done. Unless of course the answer for any given combination of these numbers results in 1/3 which it does not. Just a little nitpick at the wording ;-) I have noticed that as well ... too late Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 11, 2008 Report Share Posted January 11, 2008 So would this have more then one answer? or is it only one unique answer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 19, 2008 Report Share Posted February 19, 2008 Also the top number has to all add up to a 3 digit number. good puzzle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 27, 2008 Report Share Posted February 27, 2008 i dont think so. :huh: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 27, 2008 Report Share Posted February 27, 2008 (edited) Can you use all 9 numerals - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 a 9 - above and below a fraction symbol, to create a fraction equalling 1/3 (one third)? oh oh, i got it. errr, yes! word it better maybe? kiger Edited February 27, 2008 by kiger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 3, 2008 Report Share Posted March 3, 2008 Fraction - Back to the Number Puzzles Can you use all 9 numerals - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 a 9 - above and below a fraction symbol, to create a fraction equalling 1/3 (one third)? Fraction - solution 5832/17496 = 1/3 I took the same approach you did to solving: numerator = 4 digits, denominator = 5 digits. Working backward: 6/18 = 1/3, 24/72 = 1/3 and 3/9 = 1/3; therefore 6243/18729 = 1/3. Took less than a minute to solve. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 17, 2008 Report Share Posted April 17, 2008 I took the same approach you did to solving: numerator = 4 digits, denominator = 5 digits. Working backward: 6/18 = 1/3, 24/72 = 1/3 and 3/9 = 1/3; therefore 6243/18729 = 1/3. Took less than a minute to solve. Although your solution works out to 1/3, your answer is incorrect as you used the numeral 2 twice and did not use the numeral 5. I beleive you were supposed to all numbers only once. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted April 30, 2008 Report Share Posted April 30, 2008 the question doesn't state that the numerals must be used once and once only. 123456789/123456789(3) is probably the most obvious answer, but obviously it requires sentience, and anything sentient is not random (as someone has already mentioned). whoever writes these questions should have some understanding of semantics (the most important part of language logic). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 6, 2008 Report Share Posted July 6, 2008 I got the same answer, though it was out of luck instead of strategy. I figured the numerator would have 4 digits and the denominator 5 digits (I don't think there's another setup to distribute the 9 digits). Also since 3x3=9 and 2x3=6 why don't we just use 32 as the last two digits of the numerator to get 96 as the last two digits of the denominator, so there wouldn't be so many numbers left to work with. So we have 1, 4, 5, 7, 8 left to work with to place in the first two digits of the numerator and the first three digits of the denominator. The first digit of the denominator has to be 1 (because multiplying 4,5,7,8 by 3 gives you a first digit of 1 or 2 and 2 was already used) Then you see that by multiplying 8 by 3, you get a 4 as the second digit (so I placed 8 as the 2nd digit of the numerator and 4 as the third digit, and the 5 and 7, luckily for me, happened to fit in the rest. So I got 5832/17496. Feels good to get this problem right when I thought it was impossible before Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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