The flower puzzle that even a maths teacher says he can't solve

People have come up with a variety of answers to this problem that supposedly originated as a maths puzzle for Chinese children.

Nobody is sure what the right answer is

It appeared on Thursday on the English language Facebook page of the People's Daily, a Chinese newspaper. A caption with it read:

Loads of adults have been stumped by this ‪#‎math‬ problem from a Chinese kindergarten test. What's your answer?

Since it was posted a few hours ago, the puzzle has prompted over 5,000 answers from users

101 has been a popular answer, but some have also argued it's 81, others that it was 102 or 105, and one chap correctly pointed out this seemed far too difficult a puzzle to have been solved by young children.

To settle the confusion, a maths teacher and puzzle aficionado joined the online conversation. In a post to the brain teaser forum theproblemsite.com, "Professor Puzzler" said the flower puzzle was impossible:

The correct answer to this question is, 'No, I cannot solve this.' There really is no other answer. If you came up with a numerical value, you were wrong (sorry!)

The reason it can described as unsolvable? There's too little consistency in the flower symbols. For instance the final line only has one yellow flower compared to two in the line above, and the final blue flower has fewer petals than the blue flowers above. These distinctions complicate the equation to the extent that Professor Puzzler advises giving up:

You know what? I'm not going to follow through with this any further, because it's not a pretty system of equations, plus it's not inherently obvious that we should interpret the problem this way. So I think it's just a waste of my time.

Yet there is a way to come up with an answer of 81 that does take into account the variety of images in the puzzle:

The first three lines of the equation teach us:

Red flower=20,

Blue Flower (5 petals) = 5

Yellow flowers (x2) = 2

Therefore:

Yellower flower (x1) + Red Flower x Blue Flower (4 petals)

1 + 20 x 4 = 81

Not everyone has been satisfied with this answer though, nor has the derivation of the puzzle been confirmed.

The image used on Facebook appears to come from Weibo, the Chinese microblogging site which is a hybrid of Facebook and Twitter. The link leads to the personal page of a user, "@turbosun", but a quick reverse image search reveals multiple examples of the puzzle which predates this post:

Could it really be part of a test for young children? It wouldn't be the first time an "easy" puzzle has befuddled full grown adults.

What do you think the answer is? Let us know in the comments...

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