This viral maths riddle has sent my brain into orbit – can you solve it?

Right now there is a maths riddle going viral, and if I’m being totally straight with you – it’s ruined my day. Sure, these maths questions and puzzles go around all the time, but this one really looked me in the eye and said “you have no idea how to solve me, do you?” I feel seen.

The question has been posted on Twitter, and viewed over 50k times. There are people in the comments discussing answers, which makes me feel marginally better about struggling HARD over this, and a few good samaritans have posted the answer to put us all out of our misery.

So before you cheat and look at the answer – yes I will provide it – here’s the riddle in all its glory to see if you can come up with an answer yourself.

Right, how do you solve the viral maths riddle?

The riddle says the following: 5+5=11, 6+6=14, 7+7=17 and 8+8=20. It then asks, following this logic, 9+9=? Can you see the pattern and work out what the answer is?

If you can’t, here’s it broken down without any maths related jargon that will make you lose your head even further. The answer you should come to is 23.

The way you do it is, you complete the sum as presented in front of you, but then also add the number in the sequence that the sum is. For example, 5+5 is the first sum asked, so you do that and then add 1. 6+6 is the second, so you do 6+6 and then add 2. So on, and so on.

I won’t share how long it took me to work that out.

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Featured image (before edits) via Unsplash.