The other day I was sitting in my local tavern, The Spyglass, which overlooks the sea, when in sailed my old friend the pirate Captain Conan Drum. "Well, shiver me barnacles!" he roared on seeing me. He too is a bit of a puzzle addict and so, after joining me for a glass of milk and telling me about his latest exploits on the high seas, he couldn't resist showing me his latest conundrum.
He reached into one of his jacket pockets and produced seven gleaming £5 coins, which he then proceeded to arrange on the table in front of me exactly as shown below. "Now, me lad." he said, with a mischievous look in his eyes. "I'll wager you'll not be able to solve this one. Take away two coins from this here arrangement to leave five coins across and three coins going down."
It was clear the wily old sea dog still had one or two tricks up his sleeve, as I couldn't for the life of me see how it could be done. Can you see through his skulduggery and solve it?
Hint
Start by imaging a sign saying 'BrainBashers Puzzles And Illusions'.
Answer
I commissioned an artist to paint a sign for BrainBashers that said 'BrainBashers Puzzles And Illusions', however, they made a terrible mistake.
The gaps between 'Puzzles' and 'And', and 'And' and 'Illusions' weren't the same, so the sign seemed oddly out of balance.
Answer
If the sum of the digits is divisible by nine, so is the number.
Add up all of the digits in the number and see if the sum is divisible by 9. If you still can't tell, you can add those digits again to see if the new sum is divisible by 9. You can keep going until you the sum is obviously divisible by 9 or not.
For example, is 486451464 divisible by 9?
Do 4 + 8 + 6 + 4 + 5 + 1 + 4 + 6 + 4 = 42.
Is 42 divisible by 9? Not sure, you can then do:
4 + 2 = 6. Which clearly isn't divisible by 9. So our original number, 486451464, isn't either.
