It took me a bit to dig through the fringe cases to find the combination (or maybe an additional combination?) to pull that off. x = '' y = '-Infinity' z = -

It took me a bit to dig through the fringe cases to find the combination (or maybe an additional combination?) to pull that off. x = '' y = '-Infinity' z = -1 x < y // true: '-Infinity' (y) doesn't get coerced into a number, so '' < 'any string with at least 1 character' y < z // true: '-Infinity' (y) compares with a number, so it coerces to -Infinity, which is less than -1 (z) z < x // true: '' (x) is compared with a number, so it coerces to 0, which is greater than -1 (z) Thank you for the brain exercise! P.S. - No one ever use crap like this in production code!