BP’s Strange Puzzle

In LinkedIn last week, BP had a posting of a puzzle: “What is unique about the following number? 8,549,176,320.” The responses I saw were giving answers to the puzzle. I looked at it and wondered: “I wonder if this puzzle is out on Google?” I googled the number and sure enough, it is out there. It has been out there since at least 2006.

So what was the point of BP posting it? If you answered it, it didn’t necessarily show that you could solve problems. It more likely showed you knew how to Google the answer.

So why? Was it to see if you could come up with a really creative response? There were a couple of good ones. Was it to see who would even see the puzzle?

Not sure what it was about.

I’m not going to tell you the answer. You can Google it. And that probably should be the first thing you do when you have a question.

Boy, it didn’t used to be this way.

[divider]And now we are left with the really hard problems with no answers in the Internet.[/divider]