Puzzler of 01/21/2012: What is X in the series 4, 6, 12, 18, 30, 42, 60, X, 102, ...?

After reading the solution (not here, but where Cartalk gives their official solution) I filed this under “I wouldn’t have gotten this in a million years”.

Not only does this require a bizarre mathematical insight the average person wouldn’t get, they explain it in a way that doesn’t make it obvious at all how you would go about finding the solution.

I came up with 78, not 72.

Now I wonder how many correct answers to this they would have gotten. They never tally that up for us.