That gets at what makes using additional functions like in the blog post a bit arbitrary: we don't have special notation for "+ 1" or "* 2", but we do for "^(1/

That gets at what makes using additional functions like in the blog post a bit arbitrary: we don't have special notation for "+ 1" or "* 2", but we do for "^(1/2)" and "log_2". It's not hard to imagine a different world where "+ 1" or "^2" had special notation, and suddenly we'd be able to solve the question in even simpler ways. It's still a fun puzzle, it's just based more on our shared notational conventions as much as the underlying math.