Nov 16, 2021
Well, the guys got lazy in this week’s show. They decided to “extend” the current puzzler for another episode (Translation: Ray was too busy shampooing his trunk and didn’t come up with a new puzzler).
Here it is again, in case you missed it, with our apologies for the slothful conduct of our colleagues!:
It's time for the new puzzler and this is this one is a good one. This is a very simple one. All of us are familiar with the kinds of puzzles where we give a sequence of numbers and ask you to name the next term.
For example, one, three, five, seven, nine, twenty-three. What's the next term? Right?
Well, this is just like that. And I'm going to read it just like that. I'm going to give you a string of numbers all separated by commas. And I will say where the commas are. And I want you to give us the next term.
Here's, here's the sequence of numbers. "1 comma 11 comma 21 comma 1211 comma 111,221 comma space." Now, what's the next term?
Now to be fair, my brother insisted that I had given you the numbers wrong, so here's how he read them.
"1 <pause> 11 <pause> 21 <pause> 1211 <pause> 111221 <end>"
And neither one of those things will help you at all! My brother was adamant that we also ask you why? So our question is, what's the next term and why?
The next number is 312211.
The key is that each number is telling you what the previous number was. So the first number is one. The second number says that the previous number was one, one. Get it?
Right though the 11 means 11 is one, one. The next number two, one is telling you what the previous number was, what was the previous number 11? So this next number is two, one.
It's just defining or numerating or whatever a number of digits.
The next one after 21 would tell you that there's one two, and one one which is 1211.
Then there was one one, one two, and two ones. Then there were three ones, two twos and one one.
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