Thursday, June 13, 2019

riddle - Properties of numbers...?



One has five.



Two has two.


Three and four only have one.



What does eight have?



hints? who needs hints? :)



Updated hints from comments:



@ibrahim_mahrir - A hint? I'd suggest to contemplate What, when, where but not why? But that's as likely to be taken the wrong way as the right one....... :) Anyway, it's yours and mine, and a bit superficial too.

@Adam - the decrease isn't an essential feature [in the sense that, one having more doesn't of itself mean the next ones must have less]. I think that's a safe enough comment :)




Comments on the puzzle and its hints + answer (ignore this bit!)



I found myself looking at an ordinary analog clock on the wall, and thinking about how one never really saw the "1" in "10". You only tend to see ten as a unit, not it terms of its digits "one" and "zero". A bit like how the eye skips over the the typos in some sentences. The puzzle came full fledged from that. I wasn't sure anyone would get it, I wanted to find out if someone could, on such abstract wording.

I suspect my comment on the 7-seg guess was too cluey, but it really was inspired for closeness. Its hard to hint without narrowing it down. The hints above, well....

what/where/when - what are they and where/when are they [found], would be more productive than looking for a formula. Asking why are they, wouldn't help though. Mine+yours = ours ("hours"), and anything superficial is talking about things on the face of something (a clock face).




Answer



I think that Eight has



1




because, each number has



the specified number of instances left of the colon on a standard 12 hour clock in one day



That is:



One has five (01:XX, 10:XX, 11:XX, 12:XX) Note: there are two in 11
Two has two (02:XX, 12:XX)
Three and Four only have 1 (03:XX, 04:XX)




Therefore Eight has:



1 (08:XX)





EDIT / ADDITION: While describing my solution in comments, I came to the obvious realization that the answer might be more succinctly written as:



The count of each number's digits in the months of the year.



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