The boys and I have been doing a lot of math games lately. Most recently, we’ve been having fun trying to trick  each other into getting easy math wrong. The other day I was riding with my youngest, and I asked him what 6+6 was.

“Um,” he said.

I made the air horn sound. “Too slow!”

“Twelve,” he shouted.

“10+2?”

“Twelve”

“24 divided by 2?”

“Twelve”

I could see in the mirror that he knew what was coming. One of the tricks we do is ask someone a bunch of rapid fire questions, all of which have the same answer. Once it gets rolling, you slip in a question with a different answer.

“8+4?”

“12!”

“4+8?”

“12!”

“4 times 3?”

“12!”

“4 + 3?”

“Six!”

I chuckled. “Six?”

He took a moment to roll the question back in his head. “Wait! Seven! I meant seven!”

“Gotcha.”

“Oh man! You always go to six after asking me twelves.”

“Not this time,” I said again, trying to keep my voice light while my brain processed what he’d just said. Not only had he noticed a pattern in my questions that I wasn’t aware of, but he’d been using it to answer my questions so he didn’t have to do the math.

“4 times 2,” he said.

“Eight,” I answered, and the game continued.

I have to admit, though, that I’m feeling out-gunned. All I’ve been doing is math. I haven’t been analyzing trends in my opponent’s questions.