Puzzle 38 – Solution.

The keystroke that does the trick for me is '0'. Yep adding a 0 to 52 changes it to 42.

int theAnswer = 052;

If you still wondering what has changed, it's that adding a leading 0 to a literal number means that the number is considered as an octal number. Doing a quick math would reveal that octal(52) = decimal (42).

This is also a pitfall – one should be careful of not adding any leading 0 in Java!

@SlimMo - Pretty neat thinking! That was indeed a unique solution - my favorite one for this puzzle!