As Bob’s Burgers once wisely reminded us, “A lie is not a twist!” And while that might not be fully applicable to the latest “puzzle” everyone will be sharing on Facebook for the next week, it comes close enough. Here’s the puzzle as shared by Antley Lamont Staten (And don’t read past the image if you want to solve it for yourself, because we are just going to ruin the hell out of this thing for you otherwise):
Did you get it? Regardless, did you have fun? Probably not! The puzzle actually has nothing to do with the numbers. The mistake is that the word mistake is spelled “mitsake.” Technically the post never explicitly says the puzzle has to do with the math, but this one really toes the line between “cute” and “why did you make me look at those stupid numbers for so long?” And it seems especially unfair because the human brain is really good at piecing together words from jumbled letters. It’s also possible that even people who noticed the “mitsake” didn’t realize that was the mistake they were supposed to be looking for. So, in the end, everybody loses.
To make it up to you, here are some photos of signs that people accidentally messed up in a vaguely humorous way (like writing “yard sale” as “yard sard”). Consider it a reward for all that puzzling.