# Not so straight forward . . .

I see puzzles like this all over the internet. It is basically Algebra and at first glance, many people will think the answer is 50. Then some people will believe that using the mathematical “… order of operations …” the answer is 14 or even 10

Quite simply (in my opinion) the answer cannot be found from the information given. Now here’s why:

• We can determine from the first equation that the image value of the cookie is equal to 10.
• From the second equation, we can give the image of 2 bananas a value of 2, as 14 minus the cookie value is equal to 4, hence the 2 banana image must equal 2
• The clock image value must be equal to 3 because if you take the value of the 2 banana image (determined as equal to 2) from the total of 8, you are left with 6, therefore the image value for each clock must be equal to 3.

That is as far as we can go. We cannot safely assume that the image of the single banana is equal to 1 simply because there is only one banana. It could be any value. The same applies to the clock image (with the hands now pointing to 2) and the cookie image with the seven dots.

Therefore, in my opinion the answer cannot be found.