gigastasioI'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!
JilanicoFigured it out. Weirdly, knowing you solved it made me confident I could too, and I don’t even know you 🤔
spoilerI 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. ___
SnailpopeThis 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. Every time I had an idea that was too complicated, I 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.