text: complex word problem? fred willianson had some leftover boards that were 16 feet long. he decided to use them for projects in his house. first he cut a 16 foot board into two unequal pieces. he then cut five additional 16 foot boards using exactly the same dimensions. he used all six of the longer pieces to complete a wall. he used four of the shorter pieces to case in a stairwell. in all, he used 82 linear feet of boards on the two projects. what were the lengths of the pieces after he cut each baord in two? the most important thing in any word problem is figuring out how to set it up.  our intrepid builder cut a total of 6 boards, and used the longer pieces from all of them, so he used 6x feet of wood.  additionally, he used 4 of the smaller pieces, each of which is (16 - x) feet long.  this accounts for another 4(16 - x) feet.  this all has to add up to 82 feet of boards, so we get the equation:  6x + 4(16 - x) = 82  this simplifies as follows:  6x + 64 - 4x = 82 2x + 64= 82  the final answer is left as an exercise for the reader.