Many years ago, in elementary and middle school, a teacher I had for many years in a row (they considered my “gifted” back then, now, not so much) loved to pull out a card game called Krypto to keep our puzzlers puzzling. It was an exercise in problem solving, critical thinking, and basic mathematic skills. I loved it; I hated it.

Now, as a much older person, I find myself strangely drawn to the game. It’s still available from the Making People Happy company, and I’ll definitely be picking up the game for my three children. They also have an online version over there, and I thought that it might be fun to have one going here as well.

The rules of the game are very simple. I’ll give you six numbers in all, numbered 1 - 20, with repeats allowed. All you have to do is arrange the first five numbers into a mathematical expression that equals the sixth number. You may use the four arithmetical operators (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division), as well as parenthesis. Standard order of operations apply, of course. I’ll be picking the six numbers from a little perl script, but I hope to build a Drupal module for this at some point.

Ready to have a go? This weeks numbers are: 19, 14, 9, 7, 15 equals 16. Leave your correct response in the comments. There’s almost always a solution (in the thousands of hands I’ve played, I only remember one hand we could not find a solution for), and there’s usually more than one.