How to Solve a Riddle That Saves the City From Dr. Schrödinger’s Planned Army of Giant Cats

In “Can you solve the giant cat army riddle?” by animated by math teacher and TED-Ed educator Daniel Finkel and animated by Artrake Studio, narrator Addison Anderson poses a clever riddle to solve. It all starts with a crazed Dr. Schrödinger who wants an army of supersized felines to terrorize the city and a team of agents now trapped in what was thought to be his lab. In order to escape, the code 2, 10 and 14 has to be entered into the computer, but there are only three keys available to use +7, +5 and ? and a risk of blowing up everyone in the room.

All you have to do is enter those numbers and you’ll be free. But there’s a problem. The control panel has only three buttons: one which adds 5 to the display number, one which adds 7, and one which takes the square root. You need to make the display output the numbers 2, 10, and 14, in that order.It’s okay if it outputs different numbers in between, but there’s no way to reset the display, so once you get to 2, you’ll have to continue on to 10 and 14 from there. …there are other traps built into the panel. If it ever shows the same number more than once, a number greater than 60, or a non-whole number, the room will explode.

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.

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