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.

  • mushroommunk@lemmy.today
    70·
    3 days ago

    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

    • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
      6·
      2 days ago

      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.

      • mushroommunk@lemmy.today
        2·
        2 days ago

        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.

    • flyhunter@lemmy.world
      4·
      2 days ago

      Take a look on tunic, but it comes with some combat action, which may not be what you are looking for.

      • mushroommunk@lemmy.today
        3·
        2 days ago

        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.

        • flyhunter@lemmy.world
          3·
          2 days ago

          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.

      • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        You can turn that down and I highly recommend doing so.

        I found the combat to be quite obnoxious.

    • gigastasio@sh.itjust.worksOP
      18·
      3 days ago

      Loved that game and every game in that series. Part of the fun was being dropped into this world with no clues and just having to feel your way around.

      I admit that I surrendered after a while and got a walkthrough, which was followed by several hours of, “Oh for fucks sake I could have figured that out!”

      • mushroommunk@lemmy.today
        11·
        3 days ago

        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

    • fartographer@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 days ago

      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.

      • mushroommunk@lemmy.today
        5·
        3 days ago

        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

  • Jilanico@lemmy.worldEnglish
    54·
    3 days ago

    Figured it out. Weirdly, knowing you solved it made me confident I could too, and I don’t even know you 🤔

    spoiler

    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.

    • sem@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      8 minutes ago

      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.

      • justanotheruser4@lemmy.world
        4·
        2 days ago

        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

  • gigastasio@sh.itjust.worksOP
    44·
    3 days ago

    Free clue: It’s not 15. That solution doesn’t work for the bottom numbers, and it’s very clearly stated that the 7 is not a typo.

    Edit: What makes this puzzle so good is that it tempts you with an “obvious” solution that works with all but the last set, but there’s an equally obvious solution that does fit every set, if you can shake yourself free of the fist one.

    • melvisntnormal@feddit.uk
      1·
      2 days ago

      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.

  • Enkrod@feddit.org
    28·
    3 days ago

    Hah, took me nearly a minute.

    Tap for spoiler

    Add the digits on both sides.

    ? = 12

    But I only got it so quickly because I enjoyed a similar puzzle once.

    1
    11
    21
    1211
    111221
    312211
    …

    continue the series.

  • Sunkblake@lemmy.world
    9·
    4 hours ago

    Oh i see,

    Its

    solution

    12

    You add up the digits.

    (7+2)+(9+9)=9+18=27

    9+(4+5)=9+9=18

    (1+8)+(3+9)=9+12=21

    (2+1)+(3+6)=3+9=12

    3+(2+8)=3+10=13

    (1+3)+(2+1)=4+3=7

    Yay

  • alejandra@lemmy.world
    3·
    2 days ago

    I love puzzles like this—the rule always seems obvious after you see it. It’s satisfying when something that sits in the back of your mind for years finally clicks.

  • Zamboni_Driver@lemmy.caEnglish
    24·
    3 days ago

    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.

  • LillaApan@feddit.org
    2·
    2 days ago

    Don’t search for creator of the puzzle, you will be instantly spoilered. At least some search engines return pictures with spoilers.

  • emeralddawn45@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    15·
    3 days ago

    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.

    • Avicenna@programming.dev
      6·
      3 days ago

      Yeah it takes a different type of self confidence to think someone else can consider “adding two numbers” as their master piece puzzle lol.

      • thinkercharmercoderfarmer@slrpnk.net
        3·
        3 days ago

        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.