A potato. The roots growing out of a potato are called eyes, when you cut a potato in half it doesn’t produce any moisture and if you leave a poor potato to its own devices, it will die.
This mother comes from a family of eight,
Supports her children in spite of their weight,
Turns around without being called,
Has held you since the time you crawled.
“Mother” Earth. The family of eight are the eight planets, all of the world’s population is quite a load, the earth is always spinning (or turning around) and unless you’re an alien, you’ve been on earth your whole life.
Nothing. Nothing is greater than God, nothing is more evil than the devil, the poor have nothing, the rich need nothing and if you eat nothing you’ll die.
A similar problem can be found in L.A. Graham’s Ingenious Mathematical Problems and Methods with a range of 1 to 9, but the principle remains the same – the numbers with the smallest difference produce the largest product. You start out with the highest two digits, 7 and 6, then attach 5 and 4, putting the smaller of the two digits with the larger number, giving you 74 and 65. The next two highest digits are 3 and 2, giving you 742 and 653. Finally, you add the 1 to the lower number. Page 80 has the details of that solution.