Solve the Brain-Teaser That Is Driving People on Facebook Insane

Facebook user Lisa Woelke shared a brain-teaser that has been driving the Internet nuts. The post — which has been shared by more than 170,000 users — depicts a math equation with fruit items in lieu of numbers. For example, it can be deduced from the first line that one apple is equivalent to the number 10. Harmless enough, right? Wrong.

The most common answer for the remaining final line was 16 — and you shouldn’t be discouraged if that’s the answer you arrived at . . . it just isn’t the correct one. The final answer is actually 14. You might be asking yourself, “What the what?” as you ponder the degeneration of your math skills, but it’s OK. We can work through this together.

So yes, one apple equals 10, one banana bunch equals four, and the coconuts equal two. However, the final line alters the coconuts and bananas so that they are each missing one, respectively. In the case of the last line, there is only one coconut — equaling one — and three bananas in the bunch, which equal three. So one apple (10) plus one coconut (one) and three bananas (three) equal 14. Voilà!