Ain't no thang like a ... super puzzling chicken wing math problem?
One section of a Philadelphia restaurant's menu has Twitter in an uproar this week because of its mind-boggling pricing structure.
It all started when Sean Woodall, a jewelry designer based in the City of Brotherly Love, snapped a picture of the wing price list from Danny's Wok, a Chinese food eatery located on the west side of the city:
The extremely detailed list starts off as most menus do, with the price for four wings, then five, six, seven ... you get the idea — all the way up to 30. But then, it takes an unusual turn and starts counting by fives, then 10s, then fives again, then 10s, before jumping to the mega platters of 125 wings and up. The wings also come in a variety of flavors including Buffalo, barbecue, Teriyaki and General Tso sauce.
At TODAY Food, we're pretty serious wing fans, so we applaud the general idea of a price-per-wing menu. It's important to know one's limit, of course, and why be forced to buy a dozen wings when you know your max is seven, right? Or, what if you're with a person who says they'll just "have one or two"?
However, the exact math on the menu is a bit, well, confusing to decipher.
Woodall, who lives near the restaurant, told TODAY Food, "I found it so funny that they bothered to list out the price for every imaginable amount of wings, and I then freaked out even more when it appeared there was no logic to the price per wing."
That's right.
Taking a deeper dive into the menu, four wings cost $4.55, which, divided by four, means a wing is $1.1375 each. So, five wings should be $5.6875 ... but on the menu, they're $5.70. (Wait, what, it gets more expensive when you buy more?!)
But then six wings are $6.80 on the menu, and seven wings will run you $7.95 — meaning that suddenly, additional wings are $1.10 and $1.15 respectively.
So far, the post has garnered over 4,300 retweets and almost 17,000 likes.
Math, it seems, is a lot more fun when chicken wings are involved.
Someone even make a spreadsheet to try and break it all down!
"I think the crazy response is mainly thanks to the responses of all the mathematicians trying to figure out the price formula in the comments," Woodall said.
She added, "Everyone was so frustrated with how the price per wing didn't get cheaper with quantity purchased."
So what does the restaurant to have say about this?
When TODAY Food called Danny's Wok to inquire about how they came up with the pricing structure, a person (who would not disclose their name) patiently listened to our question, and then said, "No idea!" before quickly hanging up.
Maybe the restaurant is just too busy turning out all of those wings.