[CompSci87]

Hmm. Perhaps this is meant to be like the old saw, "How many legs does a horse have, if you call the tail a leg?" The "correct" answer to that one is "Four, because calling the tail a leg doesn't make it one."

Here we are given a bunch of false statements like "3 = 18" and asked what 10 equals. Maybe the intended answer is "10, because the false statements given earlier don't make 10 equal to 200."

Or (slight variant) maybe the puzzle is supposed to turn on the symbol "=" obviously having been redefined by the given facts, but the word "equal" still meaning what it normally does -- note Hulk used the word at the end.

However, reading Hulk's problem statement closely, it can be construed as "Find x such that the following is true: if 3 = 18  and 4 = 32 and 5 = 50 and 6 = 72 and 7 = 98, then 10 = x". But that reduces to "if FALSE then 10 = x". By a perhaps unfamiliar principle of propositional logic, the latter is true regardless of the value of x. So all answers are correct!

[CompSci87]

Hmm. Perhaps this is meant to be like the old saw, "How many legs does a horse have, if you call the tail a leg?" The "correct" answer to that one is "Four, because calling the tail a leg doesn't make it one."

Here we are given a bunch of false statements like "3 = 18" and asked what 10 equals. Maybe the intended answer is "10, because the false statements given earlier don't make 10 equal to 200."

Or (slight variant) maybe the puzzle is supposed to turn on the symbol "=" obviously having been redefined by the given facts, but the word "equal" still meaning what it normally does -- note Hulk used the word at the end.

However, reading Hulk's problem statement closely, it can be construed as "Find x such that the following is true: if 3 = 18  and 4 = 32 and 5 = 50 and 6 = 72 and 7 = 98, then 10 = x". But that reduces to "if FALSE then 10 = x". By a perhaps unfamiliar principle of propositional logic, the latter is true regardless of the value of x. So all answers are correct!