3 times what equals 42?

3 times what equals 42? In other words, what do you multiply by 3 to get 42? If "x" is "what" in the sentence, "3 times what equals 42?", then the equation to solve the problem is as follows:

3 • x = 42

Which can be written as:

3x = 42

To solve the equation above, we need to remove the 3 on the left side to make the x alone. To do that, we divide both sides by 3.

3x/3 = 42/3

3x/3 is x and 42/3 is 14 which means our equation will look like this:

x = 14

Thus, the answer to "3 times what equals 42?" is 14.

To double-check our work, multiply 14 by 3 to see that it equals 42. (Note that our answer on this page is rounded to 4 digits if necessary.)

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