Figured it out. Not sure what everyone means by a second obvious solution that doesn't work on the last one. My first solution that works on more than one works on all of them.
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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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.
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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
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.
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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!”
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Take a look on tunic, but it comes with some combat action, which may not be what you are looking for.
You can turn that down and I highly recommend doing so.
I found the combat to be quite obnoxious.
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.
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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
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. 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.
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.
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
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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.
Thanks but I'll ignore the last set and win
(╯°-°)╯︵ ┻━┻
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Ah, typo is short for typographical error. I’v never realized that before.
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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.
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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.
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.
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Wow, I just woke up and saved this to have a nice puzzle to work on for a while but I figured it out in like a minute... Kinda disappointed that happened to be honest.
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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.
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.
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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.
Hint that helped me
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.
Same... My brain was hungry for a puzzle to dig into and now its already over. Big sad.
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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
Plz fix spoiler tags
Looks like this for me?
Moved it down a line is it better?
It didn't help but I appreciate you trying. I think this is the moment I realize Sync is so wildly unsupported that it can't read spoiler tags. Sigh. That's on me.
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.
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