Puzzle Description:

... Whatever the base four system is called! this will be a much shorter description so … only three rows!

#1: Donna McFarland (Baby Jade) on Jan 6, 2021

The base four system is called quaternary. Easy solve.

I love math based puzzles. :)

My favourite base system is balanced ternary. The digits are - 0 +, with value -, 0, and +1 (times three to the appropriate power for the location of the digit). To negate a number, just exchange + and - digits. Counting from zero:

0 + +- +0 ++ +-- ... (counting up positive numbers)
0 - -+ -0 -- -++ ... (counting down negative numbers)

For a computer memory you have the same range for positive and negative values (unlike binary where the lowest negative number for any word size cannot be negated - e.g. in an 8 bit field you can have -128 up to +127 in binary while in balanced ternary an 8 trit field can represent - -1088 to +1088).

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