Elon Musk is once again the talk of the social media sphere with his recent tweet asking followers to figure out a brain teaser that is a lot less witty than he likely intended. The puzzle is simple enough, but Musk took the idea and elevated it with a meme he added to the bottom of the image.
The question being posed is this: how do you equally split two apples between three people with one stroke of a knife? The Tweet claims that only 6% of people will be able to figure it out, but the side eye meme at the bottom lends you to the realization that there are two ways your mind can immediately jump to figure it all out: do we think like a psychopath or like a math genius?
It probably won’t surprise you that most followers reacted exactly like Musk expected them to. Still, some were quick to jump at it from a problem-solving perspective, so let’s take a look at the plethora of responses Musk garnered while Tweeting to his followers today.
The first response is a perfect way for visual learners to dissect the problem, and we have to admit, it seems too obvious once you watch the response, but we have to admit, we were scratching our heads about it at first.
Hear us out; at least we didn’t immediately jump to acts of physical violence like some of these responses did, but we digress. This response laid out the method you could use to figure out how one slice could evenly separate the apples, and all we’re thinking is that it has to be a pretty huge knife to cut both apples perfectly the first time.
There were a few more responses like the ones we shared above, from people genuinely curious to figure out the equation, but the majority of them read a lot like the ones we’re about to share. Like the person who reimagined the comic and showed wholly confused faces looking rather thrilled because they figured out how to make it work.
They might be down a friend, but at least they both get an apple. Wait — that’s not right, is it? However, Their smiles say they’re not too distraught about the loss of the friend.
Another follower figured it out quickly but also recognized that you could easily choose crime and make the math equation easier in one simple…er…murderous step.
There is a one-word answer to it.
Taking it back to the iconic American Psycho, who better to help solve a problem than Patrick Bateman himself?
We might have been living under a rock, but we’d never seen this little sketched video, which fits perfectly here.
This gif sums up our thought process on the entire equation.
Be it that you took the time to figure out an equation or honored your inner Ghostface, it looks like, if we really, really try, we can say Musk’s not-so-witty tweet is one type of social experiment. But our advice? Make sure you have enough snacks for everyone without having to split anything or well, anyone; it’ll all work out better in the end.