This maths puzzle is easier than it looks – you just need to look out for one small detail.
Maths is an important part of our every day lives. We might think that we don’t need it once we leave school, but it has many uses – from helping us total our food shopping to working out what time we need to leave for work and even helping us follow cooking recipes correctly.
Keeping maths skills fresh in our minds can also help boost cognitive function and healthy brain development. Today (March 14th) marks the International Day of Mathematics, and to celebrate, we’re bringing you a maths-based brainteaser to put your skills to the test. This particular question is said to be so hard only 10% of people get it right – but there’s a trick.
The question was shared on the Australian version of the TV show The 1% Club. In this show, the questions get progressively harder and are represented by the percentage of participants who answered them correctly. For example, the first question is a 90% question, meaning 90% of the people asked got it right. The final question is one that only 1% answered correctly.
This maths puzzle, which was shared on TikTok, was the 10% question – meaning a whopping 90% of those asked weren’t able to come to the right answer. The question took the form of a sequence, with players having to find what the next number in the sequence should be.
The host read out: “What is the next number that completes this sequence? 4, 2, 3, 4, 6, 4, 9, 4, ?”
Contestants on the show were given 30 seconds to answer the question – and when their time was up, none of them could get the answer correct. Set yourself a timer and see if you can reach the solution before the time runs out. If you can, you can consider yourself among the top 10%.
The sequence might look impossible to solve, but it actually has a very easy answer. We’ll give you a small hint – you have to think outside the box. While there is some maths involved, it’s more of a logic puzzle, and you’ll need to work out what link the numbers together before you can find the missing one.
Answer
The correct answer is eight. The numbers represent how many letters are in each number of the question – so “what” has four, “is” has two, “the” has three, and so on. The numbers given go all the way up to the penultimate word in the question, so the answer is eight for the number of letters in “sequence”.
Commenters on the TikTok video were split over the question. Some found it impossible to solve, while others claimed they’d figured it out within seconds.
One person said: “That was way too easy. I figured it out before he finished reading the question.” Another added: “I was staring at the numbers for so long trying to figure out some sort of pattern, I never even thought to look at the words!”