Yes if you are going to use template literals, you need to use backticks!

now why did i spend 30 lines of code trying to do this and never get here

ugh I was trying to do something similar, but couldn't figure out how to get here :/

In this case `` is a template literals with own rules: ${} returns a value and whatever you put between `` will be shown just like a regular string.

i actually did mine similarly except mine didn't work LOL

crazy how numbers always work

question - why would you use `` instead of ''? I don't understand the difference in syntax except that it wasn't working when I wrote ''