In this week’s challenge, you need to help your local post office whose package sorting system is broken. The packages have a barcode that, when scanned, are converted into a series of ones and zeroes (bits).

The destination country is written in the barcode. It is determined by the two first bits and by the last bit. Write a formula in column U that outputs the destination of the package.

Drop your solution in the comments below! 🙂

Our solution (solves both medium and hard version):


=IF(AND(AND(M6;N6);T6);”Italy”;IF(AND(AND(M6;N6);XOR(N6;T6));”France”;IF(AND(AND(M6;T6);OR(T6;N6));”Germany”;
IF(AND(XOR(M6;N6);XOR(N6;T6));”Spain”;IF(AND(AND(NOT(M6);NOT(N6);NOT(T6)));”Russia”;
IF(AND(XOR(M6;N6;);AND(N6;T6));”USA”;”Country not found”))))))

Since the barcodes are represented by bits, we have chosen to solve this challenge with boolean logic. Inside each IF-function we evaluate the specific countries only with logical operators (AND, OR, XOR & NOT).

Read more about boolean logic:

https://www.i-programmer.info/babbages-bag/235-logic-logic-everything-is-logic.html