Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Blue flower on last line only has 4 petals instead of 5.

We are talking 'Mathematics' here, so certain established and recognised methods of 'notation' have to apply.

From Line 1 we can easily establish, that one Red Flower = 20.

From Line 2 we can easily establish, that one Blue Flower = 5

Let's look at Line 3 and examine what it actually does say, as against what it doesn't say.

Now there are two Yellow Flowers positioned side by side in Line 3. In mathematics, when two symbols are placed side by side then this indicates 'multiplication' is indicated and not 'addition'. eg. bb = b squared.

Simple rearrangement in Line 3 tells us that the value of (one Yellow Flower squared) = 2

So one Yellow Flower has the value of "the square root of 2"

In Line 4 convention tells us, that we first have to do the multiplication part of the equation. So we have:

One Yellow Flower + (20 x5) = ?

or One Yellow Flower = ? - 100

Now we know, that One Yellow flower = "the square root of 2".

Substituting and rearranging, the equation now becomes:

? = 100 + "the square root of 2". (Google tells me that the square root of 2 = 1.4142)

So we now have an answer:

? = 1.4142 + 100 = 101.4142

Bugger! I missed the fact that the Line 4 Blue Flower only has 4 petals.

Hmmm?

If we can infer, that a 5-petal Blue Flower has the value of 5, then obviously, a 4-petal
Blue Flower might be sensibly consider to have a value of 4.

Correcting the error in my previous post and using a new value of 4 for the 4-petal Blue Flower in Line 4, we now have:

? = 80 +1.4142 = 81.4142

I don't think two bananas side by side ever represent 'bananas squared'.

But shouldn't the answer be 84?

No

The answer. 81.

This is calculated because the puzzle tells us that the red flower is worth 20, that a blue flower with five petals is worth 5, and two yellow flowers are worth two.

In the final line there is one yellow flower added to one red flower multiplied by one blue flower with four petals, making the equation 1 + 20 x 4.

You multiply 20 by four, to get 80, and then add the one to get the final answer of 81.

Dont think thats right, its set out as: 1 + 20 = 21, x 4 = 84

But may have to ask my grandchildren :-)

That sounds like Broon type sums.

ie, it could mean anything, depending on how you shuffle the cards.

psst! wonna buy some gold bars?

Well, we don't have enough information to do other than a 'reasonable guess' about the value of a four petalled Blue Flower.

This makes the problem technically unsolvable.

But I think I'm right about what two Yellow Flowers 'side by side' signifies.

ie. In algebra, which is what this is, it means 'Yellow Flower x Yellow Flower' or 'Yellow Flower squared'.

There's also a rule, that when brackets aren't used, you always do the multiplication and division bits of a problem like this before the addition and subtraction bits are done:

Mathematical Precedence.............https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations

Thank you for showing us the problem, Haystack. It took me away from the TV for quite a while. :-)

You do multiplication before addition.

The order of priority is

Unary minus (that is -3 say, mainly due to negative indices)
Brackets
Indices
Division and Multiplication.
Addition and Subtraction.

I added unary minus because it is usually left out for some strange reason. It is necessary due to

x^-3 (^ being an indice)

-3+2 is essentially minus 3 plus 2 although it could be rearranged as 2-3.

Unary minus is always performed first in expressions.

If you like problems then here is one that looks impossible. It is based on a real US game show called Lets Make a Deal. It has similarities to Deal or No Deal.

There are 3 doors, behind which are two goats and a car.

You pick a door (call it door A). You’re hoping for the car of course.

The game show host, examines the other doors (B & C) and always opens one of them with a goat (Both doors might have goats; he’ll randomly pick one to open)

Here’s the game: Do you stick with door A (original guess) or switch to the other unopened door? Does it matter?

Surprisingly, the odds aren’t 50-50. If you switch doors you’ll win 2/3 of the time!

Thats all too easy, I don't think it's as straight forward as that after all it's a chinese puzzle, so I used my abucas. :0)

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/16/politics/donald-trump-republican-anxiety/index.html

As Republican angst about Donald Trump grows closer to panic, some longtime GOP strategists and donors are discussing creative ways to cut their presumptive nominee loose at their convention in July.

There's renewed talk in some Republican circles to find a way out as Trump lags big time behind Hillary Clinton in several new polls, and he has the highest unfavorable rating of any candidate for a major party on record -- 70% in this week's Washington Post-ABC poll

One source with knowledge of these discussions underscores to CNN, however, that all of the ideas being bandied about now are highly unlikely to see fruition -- mostly because this kind of move to get rid of a nominee elected by GOP primary and caucus voters would be unprecedented.

Still, here are some options:


Free delegates at the convention


Right now the ideas are focused in and around freeing convention delegates who are bound to Trump.

One way to do that would be to survey the delegates and find out who is willing the go with someone else in a second ballot. The challenge with this, according to a source familiar with the talks, is there has to be a lot of specificity. Delegates will have to be asked not just if they are willing to abandon Trump, but also whether they would then be willing to vote for a specific candidate instead.

A huge hurdle for "Never Trump" Republicans is that the alternatives -- Ted Cruz and others -- are still considered by many to be "untenable."


Using the Rules Committee

Another idea is to use the RNC convention rules committee to try to pass a rule freeing all the delegates to vote for whomever they want on the front end.

Conservatives Eric O'Keefe and David Rifkin, Jr., wrote an op ed in the Wall Street Journal this week advocating the idea, and pushing back on those who say it's not possible because state party rules, not national party rules, dictate whether delegates are bound.

"These statutes can't be legally enforced. When Republican delegates arrive in Cleveland to select their party's nominee, they should recognize that they are bound only by their consciences," wrote O'Keefe and Rifkin.

Trump threatens to go it alone

"A candidate who cannot win the support of a majority of Republican delegates voting their consciences does not deserve to be the nominee and certainly has no legal right to be," they argued.

'Conscience clause'

Another idea is to dust off an addition to the rules at the 1976 convention, called a "conscience clause," which would allow delegates bound to a candidate to be unbound if they feel the candidate did or said things they disagree with between their state's primary or caucus and the convention.

At this point, sources familiar with these discussions insist neither the congressional leadership nor the RNC is involved in these talks at all.

And, sources underscore, most of these ideas would be incredibly hard to execute -- never mind that they understand it would feed into the very real anger at the "establishment" among GOP voters that fueled Trump's victories in the first place.

It would likely prove Trump's point: party systems are rigged and cannot be trusted.

My strawberries are soggy , too much rain need a bit of dry weather . Soggy bottom no good .

so we now know the killer of cox is a mental person a sick mental person .
just a sad death by a sick mental person .

Not really, Tanker.

The circumstances of the killing of this lovely lady, Jo Cox, who is a married woman with a family, and who is also Member of Parliament, have compounded substantially.

The Houses of Parliament building enjoys substantial security with CCTV camera and armed police.

However, MPs out there in the community, even when in their own surgeries (offices), seeing constituents have virtually no protection whatsoever.

So what, if anything , do we need to do about ensuring their safety?

Tanker, are you saying: "No need to do anything because, in this instance, the murderer was a one-off nutter"?