Maths riddle stumps group of engineers

Virgin Radio

28 Sep 2021, 12:17

A Tiktok maths puzzle had a trio of engineers left puzzled, and people are loving it. 

TikTok user Karin Gendi recently uploaded a TikTok presenting a mathematical riddle to three of her engineer friends, and it had them stumped. 

In the video, Karin hands them a piece of paper with the number 100 written two times on top of each other, and a line underneath it. She tells them if they can turn it into two hundred by adding just one line she will ‘give them whatever they want’. 

Her pals are perplexed, even suggesting that there was no right answer or she’d copied it down incorrectly. One tries flipping the paper upside down to see if it makes more sense from a different angle. Just as the video is about to end, one of Karin’s engineer buddies finally cracks the code. He draws a line through the 1 of the first 100, so that the paper reads ‘too 100’, or two hundred. Clever!

Karin’s 17,000 commenters were amused by the puzzle, with many offering other inventive solutions to the problem. One Tiktoker said “I would have wrote 200 in cursive”. Another suggested “Hear me out tho… has anyone just tried to make a plus sign without lifting their pen”. 

Some commenters were convinced that she had written the problem down incorrectly to present to her friends. One user said “This is done wrong- it’s supposed to be 188 and you draw a line in the middle to make (2) 100’s”. This is what Karin’s friend in the video had suggested, but Karin was confident she’d written it right. 

Another commenter joked “Of course they spend their time thinking you’re wrong”. A third added “i love that the first reaction from engineers is ‘i can’t figure it out so u must’ve set it up wrong’”. 

The riddle has since gone viral, inspiring many other TikTokers to present the puzzle to their own friends and family. 

You can watch the full video here.