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Subtraction


rookie1ja
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Subtraction - Back to the River Crossing Puzzles

How many times can you subtract the number 2 from the number 32?

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Subtraction - solution

Once. After you subtract 2 from 32, you subtract 2 from 30, from 28, and so on.

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If you only want to work w/ positive #s, 2 can be substracted frrom 32 16 times till you get to 0:

30, 28, 26, 24, 22, 20, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 0

Otherwise you can subtract 2 from 32 an unlimited # of times. Just go into negatives:

10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 0, -2, -4, -6, -8, -10

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If you only want to work w/ positive #s, 2 can be substracted frrom 32 16 times till you get to 0:

30, 28, 26, 24, 22, 20, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 0

Otherwise you can subtract 2 from 32 an unlimited # of times. Just go into negatives:

10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 0, -2, -4, -6, -8, -10

You don't seem to get the gist of the riddle. It's not a math problem. You can only subtract 2 from 32 once because after that you are subtracting 2 from a number that isn't 32.

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That reminds me of these riddles:

How many cookies can you eat with an empty stomach? 1!

How many books can fit in an empty schoolbag? 1!

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This isn't a riddle - it's just stupid.

But even if it were a little more clever, there are so many "correct" answers (infinite, once b/c then it's 30, once b/c then all you have is a 3...) that there's no way to know which one is ultimately going to be considered the right answer.

Don't get me wrong, most of the riddles on this site are good - this one is just so below par I felt compelled to criticize.

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This isn't a riddle - it's just stupid.

But even if it were a little more clever, there are so many "correct" answers (infinite, once b/c then it's 30, once b/c then all you have is a 3...) that there's no way to know which one is ultimately going to be considered the right answer.

Don't get me wrong, most of the riddles on this site are good - this one is just so below par I felt compelled to criticize.

I like the riddle. I like putting this type in between deep logic puzzles - just to remember you that some things are quite simple

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There is one idea no one has considered. Consider 32 as the magnitude of a vector. If you think about 2 as the magnitude of another vector, then subtracting can result in a vector with magnitude between 30 and 34 inclusive. Using this logic, there are 2 vectors of length 2, which when subtracted from the vector of magnitude 32 result in another vector of magnitude 32. This means you could subtract different vectors of magnitude 2 from many vectors of magnitude 32 an infinite number of times.

I realize this is not the point of the riddle. I just thought it might be interesting.

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