Can You Solve This Tricky Viral Math Problem?

Here is a quick, fun, and self-indulgent story: I recently started studying for the GRE, and, upon skimming through the workbook, realized that I hadn’t taken a math class in almost nine years. Any confidence I had in my quantitative reasoning abilities quickly dissipated. I’ve since begun taking intro level high school math classes online because I literally have to start from scratch, so when I came upon this viral math problem that’s stumping the Internet, I thought, “Aha! A chance to test my 9th grade math abilities!”

File that one under “Famous last words.”

Here’s the deal: Researchers in Japan reportedly came across this deceptive number jumble after finding that only 60 percent of people in their 20s who attempted to solve it did so correctly. (Great, another thing Millennials have ruined — math.) It has since gone viral, as these things are wont to do, because apparently none of us have anything better to do with our time than to try (and usually fail) to solve weird brain teasers.

But maybe there’s more to it than meets the eye. As soon as I saw the math problem, I knew there were probably tricks involved, because it seemed Too Easy. I also knew that if I attempted to solve it actively in this article, no one would ever take me seriously again, because my math abilities are abysmal. I would be laughed out of grad school, probably. Or something.

Thus, I turned to instructional videos from the interwebs. Why? Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the interwebs, it’s that if you’re having a problem with something — anything — someone else is probably also having a problem with it… and accordingly, they’ve probably gone ahead and figured it out, making an instructional video documenting their solution as they went. So, yeah — I’ve been watching other people do math all morning. It’s been great.