Newsgroups: rec.puzzles
From: hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil (Dan Hoey)
Date: 5 May 92 12:35:23 GMT
Subject: Re: Counting down to 383, spoiler

With regard to making 383 out of 1,2,25,50,75,100 using +,-,*,/

d...@logos.wr.tek.com (Dan Tilque) writes:

>The best I've been able to do on this puzzle is to get 384:
>(50 - 2) * ((100 + 75)/25 + 1)

You can get 383 with ((2+50)/25+1)*100+75.

Of course, if you expect / as in C, the above expression is just 375.
But then you can get 383 with (25*50-100)/(1+2).  Pity there's no way
to use the 75.

If we had a language that rounded instead of truncating, we could use
((1+75+100)*50)/(25-2) or (2*75*(25+100))/(50-1).

I imagine your problem lies in not dividing things that aren't
divisible.

Dan Hoey
Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil