Thread: Help needed for school puzzle

Here's the problem:
"the answers below are correct even though the mutiplications are weird. What is the last answer?"

12 23 34 45
x34 x45 x56 x67
---- ----- ----- ----
1013 2003 2663 ??


Can ypu help me out?

Hello, Crossfire!

The answers below are correct even though the mutiplications are weird.
What is the last answer?

Code:

  12     23     34     45
x 34   x 45   x 56   x 67
----   ----   ----   ----
1013   2003   2663   ????

Answer: .

The first multiplication is in base-5: .

The second is in base- 6: .

The third is in base-7: .

The fourth is in base-8: .

Thanks for the help, but how did you know that it was in a different base?

Hello, Crossfire!

How did you know that it was in a different base?

The sets of consecutive numbers got me thinking . . .
. . 12 x 34, 23 x 45, 34 x 56, 45 x 67

More important, I could see that the products were "too big".
. . How can 12 x 34 produce a four-digit number?
. . I knew that this happens when the number base is less than 10.

The first multiplication had the digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4.
So I suspected a base-5 problem.
I could have been wrong, but it worked out.

The next had a 5, so it couldn't be base-5.
I guessed that it might be base-6 . . . and I was right.

So there was some luck involved, too . . .