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Can you solve the passcode riddle? - Ganesh Pai

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TEDEd Animation

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In a dystopian world, your resistance group is humanity’s last hope. Unfortunately, you’ve all been captured by the tyrannical rulers and brought to the ancient coliseum for their deadly entertainment. Will you be able to solve the passcode riddle and get everyone out safely? Ganesh Pai shows how.

Additional Resources for you to Explore

This passcode riddle is an excellent way to introduce factors and multiples and shows the most effective way to understand organized factorization. A good way to understand this problem is by first understanding how a number can be written as all possible products of t natural numbers. Here is a more detailed explanation of how that can be done. Once we have understood this process of writing a number as all possible products of 2 natural numbers, we can move on to understanding how a number can be written as all possible products of 3 natural numbers. For instance, to find the products of 36, a good way to start off would be to write it as 1*1*36. Next, we can break 36 down further and write it using all possible products of 2 numbers. We should get 1*2*18; 1*3*12; 1*4*9; and 1*6*6. We continue this process to find all possible products of 3 natural numbers.

If you enjoyed this problem, here’s another version of a problem with the number 72: "UNSOLVABLE" Logic Puzzle: What Are Their Ages?

You may also visit the educator’s website here to understand factors and multiples in detail. Finally, if you wish to understand more math concepts (who wouldn’t?), visit this link.

Love riddles? TED-Ed has plenty of them that will challenge you:

The famously difficult green-eyed logic puzzle - Alex Gendler

Can you solve the prisoner hat riddle? - Alex Gendler

Can you solve the control room riddle? - Dennis Shasha

Can you solve "Einstein’s Riddle"? - Dan Van der Vieren

Can you solve the temple riddle? - Dennis Shasha

Can you solve the frog riddle? - Derek Abbott

Can you solve the locker riddle? - Lisa Winer

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About TED-Ed Animations

TED-Ed Animations feature the words and ideas of educators brought to life by professional animators. Are you an educator or animator interested in creating a TED-Ed Animation? Nominate yourself here »

Meet The Creators

  • Educator Ganesh Pai
  • Script Editor Alex Gendler
  • Director Jun Zee Myers
  • Animator Jun Zee Myers
  • Sound Designer Nicolas Martigne
  • Narrator Addison Anderson

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