Puzzle given by Company Recruitment Team

[Wes Bucey]

For the mathematically impaired, would one of you savants post a solution?

[Frank T.]

In Reply to Parent Post by Wes Bucey

would one of you savants post a solution?

I have attached the solution, which took me 45 seconds.

I apologize if I spoiled it, for those of you who have not tried to solve it yet!!

[Craig H.]

2 1/2 minutes. I got a different solution, but we had the same columns in a different order.

[db]

three days, and i still haven't got it figured out

[Wes Bucey]

Well, Frank and Craig and the rest of you folks, I may be having a super brain freeze today or just old age finally getting me - I don't understand the mechanism for the program to calculate the 4 extreme corner boxes - because I was able to make the other boxes register 56 in about 10 seconds, but did not have the temperment to work through why the four corners had different tallies.

Please remove the mystery for me so I can have at least one more AHA moment before I die!

[Craig H.]

In Reply to Parent Post by Wes Bucey

Well, Frank and Craig and the rest of you folks, I may be having a super brain freeze today or just old age finally getting me - I don't understand the mechanism for the program to calculate the 4 extreme corner boxes - because I was able to make the other boxes register 56 in about 10 seconds, but did not have the temperment to work through why the four corners had different tallies.

Please remove the mystery for me so I can have at least one more AHA moment before I die!

My thought process was to first confirm that it seemed like the same 4 numbers were in all of the boxes, and that the four numbers added up to the desired sum. Then, starting on the right side I put them in order, top to bottom. On the left, bottom to top. Then it was just a matter of plug and chug to fill in the rest. All of the rows and all of the columns have each of the four possible numbers once and only once.

[Wes Bucey]

In Reply to Parent Post by Craig H.

My thought process was to first confirm that it seemed like the same 4 numbers were in all of the boxes, and that the four numbers added up to the desired sum. Then, starting on the right side I put them in order, top to bottom. On the left, bottom to top. Then it was just a matter of plug and chug to fill in the rest. All of the rows and all of the columns have each of the four possible numbers once and only once.

That's a solution, but I don't feel any AHA yet.

[Frank T.]

In Reply to Parent Post by Wes Bucey

Please remove the mystery for me so I can have at least one more AHA moment before I die!

Each diagonal box has to contain a 3, 7, 15 and 31.

Attached example to better illustrate.