This incredibly difficult maths puzzle is somehow aimed at eight-year-olds in Vietnam

The children of Singapore and Hong Kong have already proven themselves to be geniuses and now it's the turn of kids from Vietnam.

A new, incredibly difficult, puzzle has emerged from the country, and according to reports it's aimed at eight-year-old children.

The aim is to fill the missing gaps in the snake with the numbers 1-9. You are only allowed to use each number once, and that colon sign represents division. There is no "complicated" maths involved, simply addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

First posted by VN Express, and subsequently spotted by the Guardian, there are reportedly 362,880 combinations for placing nine different digits in nine slots.

Good night and good luck.

Scroll down for the solution

Solution

There are in fact many different solutions to this problem, with commenters on both Reddit and the Guardian coming up with dozens - with many writing a computer script to provide the answers. The one above is adapted from thesilentcoder.

According to the Guardian'sAlex Bellos, the best way to solve this puzzle using a paper and pencil is to break it down into an equation - replacing the numbers with letters. From there it is simply a matter of trial and error to finding the solutions.

How did you get on? Let us know in the comments...

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