Puzzle here, looking for some creative solutions from those better versed in bizarre notations perhaps

999, this isn't hard. Red = new lines, blue = where they were

I really don't think we're getting higher than this. I can't even calculate this value.

I'm looking for more outside the box solutions. Did any of you look at any other posts here before you made yours?

You can easily make a Carat with 2 sticks, that's entry level creativity for this question.

Interesting answers from a live thread on /b/:

5.1E+04 — 51181
1.5E+11 — 5^18 Knuth's
6.3E+40 — 5118^11
3.0E+82 — 5^118 (moves numbers to make space)
2.6E+1158 — 509! (breaks a match)
7.0E+5329 — 11^5118 (expoonent too tall)
8.0E+8450 — 11^8115 (exponent too tall + flip)
crazy big — 5^^8 Knuth's (half arrows)
infinity — 905 line on top (very questionable use)

...

Anything that says "only for genius" on it is fake and gay

1503

Did you just turn those into arrows because holy shit that's a big number.

this

But since OP wants "outside the box".... imagine an infinite number of matches made from dark matter

51181, without dicking around with exponents and the like. Take top and bottom ones from zero and make 1 at the end.

>breaking the matchsticks
>Knuth's notation (with half-arrows)
>Flipping the image
brainlets pls

The repeating decimal notation is something most professional mathematicians would not even recognize so it's definitely out.

11^5118 would be bigger than 5118^11

brainlet

>Take away the two on top of the 5
>It becomes c08
>Set c to equal infinity

Boom. Infinity. I win.

Take 1 match, use one to burn the rest of the matches and crunch them up into ashes. Use that match to push around the ashes into the largest number you can make with that much ash. It should be over 1million.

989

>bottom of 5 looks like c

Whoops. Then it's -c. Which is -infinity.

I still win.

>easy answer:
999
>real answer:
1503

>supreme answer:
5031
>unbelievable answer:
8118

>Supersaiyan answer:
9001

81151

1. Walk to the other side of the table
2. Move the matches (delete red place green)
3. Now have 81151

Where's my Fields Medal

...

>smart enough to get the best answer
>not smart enough to post it
I'll settle for a slew of honorary degrees and Bill Nye's job

I can set backwards c to be whatever I want.

I say it's infinity. I'm right.

lol according to matlab it equals infinity

That's what power is

Knowing the idea and knowing how to tell people so they'll understand it

Infinity isn't a number so you lost by default.

God is dead so you lost by default

ask me how i know you were that kid nobody wanted to play with at school

Cuz I'm always right :^}

51181
Get on my level plebs

5091. Take the bottom match from the 8 and the bottom left match from the 8. Use the two matches to make a 1 to the right of the 8 (now 9) Fucking brainlets.

Look up brainlet

not a number

EA8 = [math]14*16^2 + 10*16 + 8 = 3752[/math]
not the biggest but if we're allowed to change base then you can make this number arbitrarily large without moving more than 2 sticks.

51181 is an easy solution.

>Take the bottom match from the 8 and the bottom left match from the 8

wat?

Take 2, cut them in half.

>1111^5118

Why stop at halves. You can get even larger with quarters or eighths, etc.

lol if you're changing to an arbitrary base why would you go with 16 and not something like base-whatever-the-number-of-printable-characters-in-utf8 or worse

My hands hurt trying to break it up into smaller pieces.

It represents a number. C is a number. C=infinity=999999999999...

9718 without using exponents and having properly sized numbers

you could have placed the remaining two matchsticks at the far right thus making the final number 81151

so then you're not looking for the biggest number you're just being a fucking hipster dipshit.

Instead or arrows, make Ts, so it becomes 5TT8

Then claim the Ts are short for TREE() and that it's equal to 5*TREE(TREE(8))

(Even TREE(3) makes Graham's number look piss small.)

I can easily see 999 and came up with 8118 as my answer. How did you make the others?

Never mind that response I'm apparently retarded and uncreative

how many matches did you move?

That's supposed to be 11^

why do you hate fun

>eldrich abomination answer:
51181

983

51181 is the only real answer

This actually, without any bs its this one

two. i moved the top match from the zero to the five to make 9 |_| 8. then i moved the bottom match of what was the zero to the top left of the left adjacent line to get something that looks like [math]9\!718[/math]

5781

I define an arbitrary configuration of matchsticks to be infinity

>outside the box
careful cause you might just get stuck outside the box forever.

"you can move two matchsticks"

Can you move only 1, then?

smallest infinite limit ordinal; denoted by ω (omega).

5ω8 = 40ω

I beat everyone

1505?

...

5*(Γ111)*18

The Feferman–Schütte ordinal is Γ0

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_function

the official answer is 51181

appclarify.com/tricky-test-2-think-outside-if-you-can-now-move-2-matches-whats-the-biggest-possible-number-walkthrough/

Nah fuck your "official" shit

Finally, someone actually read the two movements rule...

ahem that would be base 2^8

[math] 5 \beth_{11} 8[/math] recalling that the beth number [math]\beth_1[/math] is the cardinality of the continuum and [math]\beth_{n+1}[/math] is the cardinality of the power set of [math]\beth_n[/math].

51118

...

999 without going into some retarded rule bending cheating shit.

You forced my hand, faggots.

I've having more fun with this than should be allowed; it's basically mathematical shitposting.

If you allow slightly misaligned lettering then you can read pic related as [math]5^{11} \mathbf{On}[/math], i.e. the disjoint sum of [math]5^{11}[/math] copies of the proper class of ordinals (this is well-defined in NBG set theory, say, and since [math]\mathbf{On}[/math] is well-ordered I'm going to argue that it just barely meets the criteria for being a number).

Moreover, [math]\mathbf{On}[/math] is a proper class (i.e., "too big to be a set") so I don't think you can get any bigger than this unless we start naming categories. Unfortunately I only have scant knowledge of category theory and can't name any that are reachable from 508 in two matchstick-moves, but Veeky Forums has a fair number of categorists so I wouldn't be surprised if someone does.

>naming categories
And I've just found one, though it requires viewing the image upside-down: [math]11 \mathbf{Pos}[/math], i.e. 11 disjoint copies of the category of posets (which is well-defined in the usual set theories, but also in any type theory that has sum types).

I have no idea how big this is supposed to be at all. I don't even know if the usual notions of "size" even apply to categories (and from my limited understanding I don't think they do).

>2^8
There are way more than 256 characters in utf-8

8118 looks good

The largest I can make is negative 9118 am I a brainlet?

50/0 with one match

9E8

which means 9 * 10^8

You're all idiots. There is no biggest possible number.

you could take 2 from the 8 and make 5061

but the 6 would look weird

Using those rules, you could also get 5031

What are you talking about? That's 109416 times bigger than the sum of all natural numbers!

Truth

Outside the box solutions are wrong. 999 is the highest

n i g g e r s

9118

don't place the second match anywhere.