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by:  Erik Oosterwal

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Really, Really, Really Big Numbers

There are an awful lot of really big numbers.  One very big named number is googol which is 1•10100 or a 1 with 100 0's behind it.  It looks like this:

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000


The largest named number is googolplex which is 1•10googol, or a 1 with googol 0's behind it.  I'd write it out for you, but my life isn't long enough to type that many 0's and there's no way your hard disk would accept a file filled with googol 0's.

This puzzle is to see how big of a number you can come up with using only four 1's.  You may use any mathematical operation you like, but the only numbers allowed are 1, 1, 1, and 1.

If that problem was too easy, what's the biggest number you can make using four 2's?

I give up, show me the Answer



All original puzzles and solutions are © Erik Oosterwal 1993-2008

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