That Fruit Math Puzzle That’s Confounding The Internet? Got The Answer Right Here

If you’ve been on Facebook lately, then you’ve seen this puzzle, which is driving us all to distraction. Seeing as how I stink at math in the first place, I never had a chance of solving this thing:

2

My reply was, “A strawberry,” and then I moved on, pleased with my own snarkiness.

But turns out there really an answer, and here it is, courtesy of Huffington Post:

On the surface, it would seem the apple has a value of 10, the bananas a value of four and the coconut a value of two. And if that were the end of the story, the answer would be 2 + 10 + 4 = 16.

But in the final frame, the fruit are slightly different.

There is half a coconut, instead of two halves in the earlier example equation that establishes a value of two. And instead of the four bananas representing the value of four, there are just three bananas.

If the numbers are reduced along with the portions of fruit, you get a totally different answer: 1 + 10 + 3 = 14.

Sounds good to me. Not I gotta go get back to attempting to balance my checking account without having a breakdown.

h/t The Huffington Post