I've had this puzzle on my phone for years. Every few months I'd glance at it and try and solve it. Last night, as I was eating dinner, I finally figured out the answer!
6 months ago by gigastasio to c/dull_mens_club
I’d like to ask the good people of this community that, if you do know the solution or figure it out, that you not share the answer here. Feel free to announce your success, but there’s something to be said for discovering the answer completely unaided, even if it takes years.
It’s embarrassingly obvious once you see it though.
Every once in a while I definitely needed the walkthrough too. I hear blue price hits the same feeling. My wife and I just need to find time to dive into it together
I recommend Outer Wilds then.
Go in as blind as possible. They recommend a controller over mouse and keyboard and they mean it. The DLC is just as good as the base game, but I'd tackle it after doing the main objective.
Outer Wilds or Outer Worlds because I've heard good things about both but know nothing about either.
I have played Chants of Zenaar some which also hits the feeling.
Outer wilds.
Outer Worlds is just a fairly mediocre sci-fi RPG (IMHO).
I have, I picked up the Myst Reader which collects all three from a used book sale a while back. I remember them being a fun read. Nothing mind blowing but a fun jaunt through more Myst
I've looked at Tunic before but it always looked more like Zelda to me. I dunno why but I've always bounced off Zelda.
I don't like Zelda games myself but loved tunic. The puzzles are completely different than Zelda, much more interesting. The other commenter mentioned you can tone the combat down. Maybe worth a try if it is on sale.
I was more of a Return to Zork kid. I'd work my way up to each character, and then kill that character to see their death scene. Then I'd start over and work my way to the next. I got all the way to the vulture at the cave, and stopped playing because I was told there were no more people to murder after that.
I always got eaten by the grue sadly.
For everyone saying it's the difference between the two numbers, it's not it. Because the last one should be 8 to follow the rule
Oh shit, I thought it was OP just being a dummy. Turns out I'm the dummy
Figured it out. Weirdly, knowing you solved it made me confident I could too, and I don't even know you 🤔
I focused on the anomaly ignoring the rest, tried to see what possible rules could lead to it, then went back to see which rule also applied to the "non-anomalous" numbers.
This is exactly how George Bernard Dantzig proved two previously unproven statistical theorems, when he thought they were homework assignments.
Once I saw a video about Mario Kart speedrunning history and there was a record on Rainbow Road that lasted for years. Than someone broke it but just told the community without showing how it was done. In a couple of days someone else figured it out and did it too. Sometimes we just need to know it is possible
Yes, the hint that the answer was obvious once you knew it was extremely helpful.
I'm not that quick with math, so knowing that the answer was going to be simple helped a lot. Every time I had an idea that was too complicated, I shelved it and kept looking for something that might be simpler.
It also helped that I was a camp counselor, and one of our survival techniques was to have riddles with simple rules that the counselors were able to operate very easily, but which the kids used lots of brain power to try to figure out.
Thanks but I'll ignore the last set and win
(╯°-°)╯︵ ┻━┻
I wish I saw this first. I'm very prone to off-by-one errors.
I opened the comments thinking that I solved it, then some comments with broken spoiler tags essentially spoiled the actual answer for me, despite my best efforts to ignore them.
With these types of puzzles, I normally start looking for solutions that don't just involve the obvious operations. Had I seen your comment first, I would've continued playing with the first thing I noticed (and later abandoned for the wrong solution) and I think I would've got there by myself eventually.
Either others need to be more mindful of their spoiler tags, or I need to stop using Sync for Lemmy. It's probably the latter; I've seen such weird formatting that only makes sense if I assume Sync's Markdown renderer is broken.
Oh that's easier to read in me eyes
Keep going until you reach a 4!
312211
13112221
1113213211
31131211131221
Wonder if/when a 4 would ever show up... and what the formula for that would look like
Think about it.
To get a 4, you need either 1111, which can't happen because thats just 21, or you have 211112, which would again just be 31.
Seems you can't have a series that ends in anything but 1, if it starts from 1?
2
12
1112
3112
132112
1113122112
311311222112
13211321322112
1113122113121113222112
I wonder if this type of series would eventually become repeating... or is it irrational?
Still curious what the mathematical proof would look like. Not that I'd be able to understand it regardless, but curious nonetheless
Your mother's a 4.
And your father smelt of elderberries! Harumphh
Yeah. Probably.
You realize a 4 never will happen, right?
21 minus 13 is unfortunately not 7... Unless I've misunderstood what you mean?
What the heck man I have things to do today.
I think I figured it out, but it's so easy that I don't think that could possibly be it. But it is, apparently.
Wow so easy, I got this in negative 4 second, literally 4 seconds before I even saw the puzzle. Of course I'm not going to share the solution here because I don't want to ruin It, but I definitely got it.
Got it. Very misleading puzzle, haha.
There is one obvious rule that almost works but doesn't fit one number. This distraction draws your attention, making you more likely to miss the actual rule. It's a kind of misdirection.
Your comment helped me solve it.
How do we know if we're right then?
You solve for it.
If the answer you get is right, you'll be able to apply it to every trio and get the number on the "line". It's kinda like how you can plug in your answer into a quadratic equation to double check you got it right.
I have to admit that I believe I have successfully found the solution.
It took me about 2 minutes lol.
The number of comments in this thread where people confidently declare they solved it with the wrong answer is absolutely baffling. Especially since it literally calls out the exception to that 'solution' in the post itself. Did those people not even look at the 7? That's the real strength of this puzzle, making idiots who think they're geniuses loudly prove their stupidity.
I think I've been addled by years of seeing versions of "99% of MIT students get this WRONG! can you do better?" proceeded by 2 + 8 ÷ 4 = ?. I didn't comment but there was some time where I thought I had it and completely missed that the 7 contradicts the pattern, even though it's specifically called out. I'm glad someone did comment so someone else could correct them, otherwise I would have left the puzzle behind never knowing I had gotten it wrong.
Ah, typo is short for typographical error. I’v never realized that before.
Took me about 20 minutes. There's a rule you find first that would work if the 7 was an 8. But it isn't. So there's another rule.
until I read your comment I was puzzled as to why anyone would consider something so straightforward a "masterpiece", but yeah, it's quite a clever piece of misleading on the puzzle-setter's part.
I'm sute Matt Parker has made a video about this.
It took me several minutes but I finally got it. The comment saying to focus on the "anomaly" and how it could be 7 helped me to get there.
Yeah, feels pretty silly that I didn't see it sooner. I overcomplicated it haha.
I figured it out took about 10 minutes, thought i was onto it immediately until I had 8 at the end haha
Figured it out! That was cool, thanks!
Once I saw it and heard "the solution isn't obvious", I got focused on the idea of digital roots cuz I thought back to the game series 999. But that didn't work, so I focused on the shape of the pizzle and thought it looked like a thermometer, so I tried conversions of F to C, which also didn't work. But when I heard other people say that it made then think about the "obvious" solution and work around the 7, I thought back to my digital root idea and realized I was applying it in a different way in 999 versus what's happening here.
This was a fun adventure~
Same thing happened to me lol. I was thinking about primes, how numbers might add up, multiply, etc, and then I noticed the actual pattern. Womp womp lol.
I figured it out in about 3 minutes. I think I'm autistic or something
Took me a bit more and I'm not autistic. But: see below.
Reading op claiming he figured it by just looking at it and not making complicated calculations on a piece of paper probably helped a lot.
I think I figured it out but I always second guess myself lol. I feel like getting it on the first try means I am way off.
If the pattern fits for all cases, you've found the pattern (or one of multiple if there's more than one solution). I figured it out and I'm certain of it.
Nice puzzle, at first you go "wtf last should be 8" but then I read the last sentence "not a typo" and took some minutes to crack it. If it wasn't for having seen a similar solution in a different puzzle I would have been completely lost and once you know the solution it's impossible to not see it. I can see how the author of the puzzle really liked it.
Being real, if this post hadn't made it clear that the solution was non obvious, I likely would have given up before getting it, just because my chicken is being more interesting than usual.
But, knowing that there was a "trick" to it, meaning that it takes some lateral thinking, I didn't take my usual approach to number puzzles, which means it only took one look at the upper left for the likely solution to be visible. Then it was just running down and testing with the rest, then plugging in for the solution.
No way in hell I would have had the patience for it when my baby bird is being a silly dinosaur without that front loading assumption the solution wouldn't be evident with a systematic approach. Oh, I'd have given it maybe fifteen minutes, but with a fuzzy butt in play, that would have been it
No, I who. dehumanization no good
What? You've never been distracted by a chicken before?
Fun puzzle
Solved it. Wonderful. I got really hung up on dividing things by nine and seven, trying to use the remainder and stuff. But the answer, as always, is far more obvious. That which we are so used to interpreting, we simply ignore it.
I prime factored everything and was looking at ways to manipulate the factors together in a sensible rule. Seemed like a good approach, with the prime numbers at the end.
Now I'm a bit disappointed that ::: spoiler spoiler it was just the digits and not the factors... :::
Commenting for later (cheers OP)
Well, I got it correct with a guess based on a casual glance at what was there, not how the numbers actually relate or calculations based on rules or patterns.
Then I had to figure out how it actually worked.
Which was harder -- I wish I had kept scrolling.
I still keep thinking it's 15, which I know is wrong, and then I math in 14,but I can't figure out a function. Does someone want to dm me or spoiler me the function how it works? My brain is too full of more important stuff and I cannot make room for this. But I must know!
Someone else commented the pattern. The answer is not 14 or 15.
There is no function. You won't find the answer by trying different combinations math operations on the values. You need to think more outside the box.
Ignore the values.
Focus on just three numbers. How can 13 and 21 produce 7?
Thank you so very much!!!
Wait was I two or three off?
Ahaha that's so cheeky! Delightful
I’m afraid that this post has ruined my evening. I can’t figure it out and can’t let it go. I hate this.
Edit: I would not have survived if my life depended on my answer. I had to read through four to five people talking about methods until I noticed it. I’m really a stupid person.
Except 7 should be 8
IMHO, although it is hard to solve, it is neither brilliant nor profound - rather, it is misleading. It relies on a simple and common trickery involving multiple of 3, which is easy to see through for those with mathematical intuition. Of course many do not practice math, so it is seemingly interesting for them, but it's not much.
I do agree that there is no objective metric as to what constitutes as "brilliant" or "profound".
I suppose that the lack of clarity in your comments intention and (what I assume) your thought process being laid out for the audience to check for fallacy, was interpreted as unkind behaviour: specifically implying that those who weren't following your thinking process were not smart.
I doubt that you had such an intention when you wrote this comment, so I write this reply to highlight that "truth", "fact", and "opinion" in an inaccessible format may lead to misinterpretation and unwarranted conclusions.
TLDR: Yes, and please consider rephrasing to communicate intention.
spoiler
You add the two digits in the left bubble together. You separate the digits in the right bubble. You now have three separate numbers that when added together created the bubble for the next layer down
yesssss, I'm the smartest man alive!
Btw, your spoiler tag isn’t rendering! (At least not for me)
It depends on how you're accessing lemmy. Different apps render the markup weird.
Your spoiler is broken (at least on the Lemmy website), it's missing 2 newlines and a display text. Format is like this:
::: spoiler Displayed text here
Hidden text here
:::
Turns to this:
Hidden text here
Without the newlines its just plain text. Note that the "spoiler" behind the opening colons is also needed and not part of the displayed text. I.e. if you want the displayed text to be "spoiler" your first line needs to be ::: spoiler spoiler.
Nope it's way easier subtract the left number from the right number to get the 99-72 = 27 ... 36-21= 15-> 28 -15 = 13 and this is where I realized the 7 didn't work and I was confidently incorrect.
Thank you. None of the other explanations made sense.
Why did you give the author a fake name?
Each circle has something different inside it. You need to make sure the circle at the end of the arrow is different to the circle at the start of the arrow. This can be tricky because some circles have TWO arrows pointing at them, so it needs to be different to both things.
Interestingly this puzzle has multiple solutions. Here they are:
5, grape, Montreal, 97
Let me know if you find any others!
This kind of puzzle is very lazy for creators: just make the function more complicated and/or increase the amount of parameters and this makes the puzzle drastically more difficult.
The method of solving is just brute force. Boring. Uninspiring.
The function is not complicated, and the solution does not require brute force. In fact, it's quite elegant in its simplicity.
And when you get it, you then get to take a step back and admire how the creator was able to set up the numbers given to almost point to the red herring answer. Not a lazy puzzle at all.
Boring and uninspiring ass comment. You know it's free to not post anything and allow people to enjoy shit?
Found the answer in 1 minute. OK to post?
Even the last 7 at the end?
The LLMs most probably already have this puzzle in their dataset or can look it up on the internet. That's like asking you if you know how to solve it only after you have seen the solution
I wonder if my Lemmy app sucks. About half the posts with spoiler tags successfully show blank spoiler lines, but the other half, like yours, don't work for me and just reveal the text. Weird that some work and others don't, but I can't assume that half these people suck at tags so much... Must be my app. Sorry for calling you a jerk.
Took me literally 4 seconds
This does not satisfy the lowest set. 21-13=8
Chuck Testa
@lemmy.world
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@lemmy.world
An unofficial chapter of the popular Dull Men's Club.
1. Relevant commentary on your own dull life. Posts should be about your own dull, lived experience. This is our most important rule. Direct questions, random thoughts, comment baiting, advice seeking, many uses of "discuss" rarely comply with this rule.
2. Original, Fresh, Meaningful Content.
3. Avoid repetitive topics.
4. This is not a search engine
Use a search engine, a tradesperson, Reddit, friends, a specialist Facebook group, apps, Wikipedia, an AI chat, a reverse image search etc. to answer simple questions or identify objects. Also see rule 1, “comment baiting”.
There are a number of content specific communities with subject matter experts who can help you.
Some other communities to consider before posting:
5. Keep it dull. If it puts us to sleep, it’s on the right track. Examples of likely not dull: jokes, gross stuff (including toes), politics, religion, royalty, illness or injury, killing things for fun, or promotional content. Feel free to post these elsewhere.
6. No hate speech, sexism, or bullying No sexism, hate speech, degrading or excessively foul language, or other harmful language. No othering or dehumanizing of anyone or negativity towards any gender identity.
7. Proofread before posting. Use good grammar and punctuation. Avoid useless phrases. Some examples: - starting a post with "So" - starting a post with pointless phrases, like "I hope this is allowed" or “this is my first post” Only share good quality, cropped images. Do not share screenshots of images; share the original image.
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Ever play the game Myst? As a kid that's exactly how it was. Days of banging my head and then a rush of finally figuring something out. Really miss that
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