Friday Puzzler II -- sequence

Does Fibannaci have a role in the answer?

No

Alex Y

Or to be more precise, "none that I am aware of".

Hint

Alex Y

You could not use Excel to generate this sequence.

Hint #2

Alex Y

If you have any 5-year-old children or grandchildren, they may be better at solving this, or at least telling you the pattern so you can find the next number.

Final Hint

Alex Y

This puzzler seems to be going nowhere fast.

I've already said that a five-year-old would be better at this than we are.

Write down this sequence of numbers and show it to the five-year-old. Give him or her a Crayon, and sit back and watch. :-)

Hmmm

Henry Higginbotham

880?

Correct!

Alex Y

Actually, you skipped over 688, but who's counting? ;-)

Are any of us smarter than a 5-year-old?

Henry Higginbotham

Apparently not.

Re: Are any of us smarter than a 5-year-old?

Larry Barrett

I am certainly not. Please explain.

Re: Are any of us smarter than a 5-year-old?

Henry Higginbotham

Number of enclosed areas increments by one each time.

More often than not, I get left hanging on the ones I can't answer myself. So tell me What Tony Likes. I never saw the pattern.

Re: Are any of us smarter than a 5-year-old?

Alex Y

Without looking up the examples given, I will tell you that Tony likes formulas, withdrawals, tomatos, onions, undertakers, offers, and income because they all start with a preposition.

Re: Are any of us smarter than a 5-year-old?

Larry Barrett

Yep, except Webster says 'off' is an adverb. If I could remember everything I learned in 7th grade I would know if it could also be a preposition .

Re: Are any of us smarter than a 5-year-old? *LINK*

Alex Y

You are right. This site is interesting. It lists frequently used words that are exclusively prepositions, ones that are prepositions sometimes used as other parts of speech, and ones that are primarily other parts of speech but are sometimes used as prepositions. Off is in the third category.


http://www.talkenglish.com/vocabulary/top-50-prepositions.aspx