Did You Figure It Out? Get the Answer to the Riddle from E-News Issue No. 4, September 2018
Find the Right Way through the Maze
Find the right way through the maze.
A math teacher draws a maze on the board and adds numbers to it—as shown below. Then, he gives his class the following task: "Enter the maze through the entrance and leave it through the exit. The sum of the numbers crossed on the way must equal 100."
Can you solve the riddle and find a way through the maze while meeting this condition?
See solution below …
Solution
True to the saying "all roads lead to Rome," there are also different solutions to this riddle. The instructions do not specify how many times you can go through the maze, and they do not say that you cannot go backward. The trick here is to recognize that when moving backward, the numbers have to be read upside down. When you do this, the number 16 becomes the number 91, 81 becomes 18, etc. With this information, the following solutions are possible:
- Entrance > 16 > 18 > 66 > Exit
- Entrance > 66 > 18 > 16 > Exit
If the paths in the maze are taken several times:
- Entrance > 16 > 18 > 16 > Exit > Entrance > 16 > 18 > 16 > Exit
- Entrance > 16 > 18 > 16 > 18 > 16 > Exit > Entrance > 16 > Exit
If you also move backwards:
- Entrance > 16 > 18 > 16 > 18 > 16 > Move forward, move backward to the 16 (in order to count it only once) > Exit
- Entrance > 16 > move forward > move backward to 66 > move forward > move to the 18 > Exit
- Entrance > 11 > 11 > 11 > 11 > 11 > 11 > 16 > move to the 18 > Exit
All solutions equal 100!
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