The answer is “14” or some other number. Who knows.
Because while “blue apple” = 10
Red Bananas4 = 4
Coconuts2 = 2
Red Bananas3 = 3
Coconuts1 = 1
The trick is that we see the image as 3 glyphs and figure out the math
But the last line has changed the coconut glyph into a new glyph with only one coconout, and the bananas into a new glyph with only 3 bananas.
The coconut switch I saw early on; only as I was writing this up did I notice the banana-bait-and-switch.
The answer of “14” (or whatever the f**k somebody says it is) relies on math from the first three lines.
But if the last line introduces two new glyphs we can’t assume that the new glyphs bear any similarity to what came before. 4-bananas-glyph = 4 so 3-bananas-glyph = 3, right?
But why does 1-apple-glyph = 10 and not 1 ???
It’s not consistent, and relies on tricks.
One could try to argue that there are 3 glyphs - blue apple, red banana, and coconut - and we just see the apples and coconuts combined.
But that doesn’t make any sense - why would they sometimes be combined, and sometimes not?
If we are to make mathematical extrapolations, the usage has to be consistent.
Have you not yet had to deal with Everyday Mathematics? Honestly, I believe this alone is behind the GOP’s push to eliminate the Department of Education.
This reminds me of a stupid puzzle game around 2010 or so where you have to stack different size colored towers on different sized bases in a fixed field to produce a 6x6 (or some such) field where all the towers have the same final height and no row has a repeating color.
The puzzle bills itself as “The worlds hardest puzzle!” and “Almost impossible!” but in reality one of the bases, surrounded and hidden by taller ones, has an altered shape, such that one specific tower (with an altered interior that should belong on bases of a different height,) belongs there.
The game is only impossible because the basic rule, as described in the instructions, is intentionally incorrect.
