Can you figure them out?
Helping kids with their homework can be a daunting task, and one that sometimes leads you to wonder whether you really are as smart as you think.
These confusing homework questions do just that, leaving parents around the world baffled as to how they can find the answer.
From maths problems to English quizzes, these tasks are a challenge to solve - unless you can help?
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While this maths problem may appear simple at first, it's left many adults confused. ?
Sky News (UK) presenter Anna Botting shared the ?problem on Twitter, which had been assigned to her 10-year-old daughter to solve.
The presenter, who despite having studied at both Oxford and Cardiff universities has never shied from her struggles with the subject, captioned a photo of the worksheet with: "My 10-year-old's homework had me stumped."?
The question reads:
"At the beginning of the day, Hasim counted his money. He gave his brother 1/3 of his money."
"He spen?t $12 ($20.75) on a present for his sister. He then counted what he had left, and it was half what he had at the beginning of the day. How much did he give his brother? Show your method.
Even a teacher weighed in, agreeing it was confusing.
"As a teacher, I can't honestly see the point of these highly convoluted maths problems, they just heighten anxiety, feelings of frustration and failure, and lets be honest are no practical use whatsoever," they argued.
While others felt the question was too advanced.
"That's a 10-year-old's homework? That's very difficult for Year 5!" said one.
While another said the question triggered maths anxiety.
"I went back 60 years and felt the rising panic reading this. At least I wasn't hit by flying chalk this time," they said.
Answers given by her followers ranged from six to 72, but luckily her daughter's teacher was able to share the answer, which is ?24 ($41.45).
Though for many of us, the solution is every bit as confusing as the question. ?
?"I still can't do it or even understand the method. I've just retired after a 40 year career as a dentist. Don't think my maths with prescriptions ever killed anyone¡" said one follower.
"I don't even understand it with the answer written down," admitted another.
Botting also shared another of her daughter's maths problems which gave her a headache.
?"Stumped on another one," she captioned a photo of the problem, posted to Twitter, which asked:
"There are 5 times as many pens in box A than box B. Tom moves 76 pens from box A to box B. Both boxes now have the same number of pens. How many pens are in box A now??"
Many of her followers offered up different answers, ranging from 76, to 95 up to 190.?
T?hankfully TV executive/director Jonathan Glazier was able to provide some insight into how the problem could be solved, and the correct answer.
Methodically working through the equation, he was able to determine the final answer was 114.
Though many were just as stumped by how he managed to solve this, as they were by the initial question.
"Feel the pain¡ I need to go back to school just so I can help my daughter with her homework," said one follower.
While another admitted: "I fly planes for a job, and this hurts."?
A parent has shared a head-scratching word search driving parents nuts.
"My kid's word search at a restaurant recently. See if you can find 'Tropical'," the parent challenged, sharing the picture on Reddit.
Did you find it? Well, you wouldn't. But you would find "propical" instead!? It starts diagonally from the first "P" in the first row.
Commenters chalked the confusion up to the fact that there are only nine letters in the top row, unlike the 10 in the other rows.
"Can't change the P to a T, because then you have tlantain instead of plantain," one observed.
"I'll give the creator a B for effort.?"
If you're not mathematically minded, you'll feel this one in your core.
One little boy was so stumped by the fractions questions in his homework, he decided to appeal to his teacher's kind nature in lieu of answering them.
To the first question, which presents him with three different fractions and asks if these showed whether three friends shared a chocolate bar equally, he simply admitted: "I don't know."
In a second, more complicated question about ?the area of a circle, he apologises for not knowing.
"Sorry, I don't know very much about fractions. I hope you (accept) my apology," he says, with a few attempts at spelling 'apology'.
Sharing the worksheet to Facebook his mum said he'd always hated maths.?
"The note to his teacher made me laugh so much tonight at parents evening," she said.
Many praised his honesty. "He's very polite," said one. "A+ for manners young man," agreed another.
?"I would have just cried at that question," joked another.
While some homework questions with correct answers marked as wrong can have some logic ¡ª this one has left everyone confused.
Posted to the Reddit forum 'mildly infuriating', the worksheet asks students to match the right sounds to their correct animal.
However, even though there's a picture of a tiger, and the word bank says 'tiger', when a student wrote 'A tiger roars', the teacher pulled out the red pen.
People were utterly baffled when the teacher corrected their answer to 'lion'.
?"Even the word bank says tiger. Either the teacher is really ignorant or just doesn't like the kid," said one.
"Time for the teacher to grab a stool," added another.? "Poor kid."
Others shared their own stories of teachers getting it wrong.?
"When I was in third grade, my teacher 'corrected' my spelling of 'coffee'¡ to 'cofee'. And that is the day that I realised adults are not genius superheroes," one said.
However, others said it was probably just a case of human error. ?
"As a teacher¡ I can say they were probably just exhausted and grading at 11pm. Not trying to be infuriating," argued one.
W?hile this equations worksheet seems simple enough at first glance, many adults on Reddit were left confused about why the student was marked incorrect, despite ultimately finding the right answer.
The baffled parent uploaded a photo of the workbook alongside the caption, "What common core nonsense is this??"
Apparently, the aim was to get students counting the shapes in each row, using addition to find the total number of circles by adding up each sequence.
While the student managed to get the first one correct by adding each row of three, things became more complicated when the number of shapes differed in the across and down columns.
And when the child counted the rows downwards instead of across, they were marked incorrect, however many people felt this unfair as it wasn't clear which way they should count?.
"This is how you make kids hate math!" declared one.
Many adults were also perplexed because there were two identical questions.
"The real question is: Why are eight and nine literally the same??" one asked.
"Still shouldn't be marking wrong for doing verticals vs lateral. If the point is to teach relational concepts of numbers, they are getting the concept and practice application but getting it marked wrong will confuse them," argued another.
"As a former primary classroom teacher, unless the lesson objective was specifically teaching the kids to group rows horizontally, this makes no sense to me," agreed a third.
One mum from Scotland has taken to a popular Facebook page to vent her frustration over her child's "ridiculous" maths homework.?
The logic question involves a number of animals living together before only one is left ¨C and students are required to work backwards and explain their answer.
"Help! I can't for the life of me figure it out and google isn't helping. Surely this isn't actually a Key Stage 2 question?" the confused mum wrote alongside a photo.
It should be noted 'Key Stage 2' refers to Years 3 to 6 here in Australia. ?
The post sparked a heated debate among parents, as they clashed over the correct answer.
Many were equally bewildered by the problem and thought it was inappropriate for children.
"I'm a primary school teacher and think this is ridiculous," said one.
"Giving them this kind of task stresses children out... they are children. Even grown adults on here are giving different answers and clearly finding it hard. This can make them lose confidence in themselves," argued another.
"I mean, I get how to find the answer but my brain slides away in horror at the thought of actually having to do it," noted a third.
Others thought it was a valuable exercise for primary school kids.
"It teaches problem-solving and logic in a creative way that's child friendly," said one.
"I agree it's demanding... but when I was KS2 I loved puzzles like this."
"I'm a maths teacher I could do this in my sleep," said another.
Most adults simply could not work it out.?
"Okay but seriously, what's the answer?" declared one.?
"My maths degree hubby trying to work it out and genuinely baffled! We have a year 6 son and that's a tough question."
When toddlers are learning their ABCs, you would hope that ?products aimed at assisting their learning are correct.
A kids' alphabet rug has left thousands of people baffled after it was shared on Reddit with a noticeable error. ?
The brightly-coloured rug features the 26 letters of the alphabet, along with fun pictures to represent each letter from A-Z.
While A is clearly for apple, and B is obviously for bear, people were confused by the letter N.
"Kids area of a hospital lobby. N is for ?", the original poster wrote in the caption alongside a photo of the rug.
The photo has since gone viral, attracting almost 60,000 comments. ?
"I'm going with newborn," said one.
"Nicholas the chicken," declared another. "'N' for 'None of your business'," laughed a third.
"Nuggets," joked a fourth, which set off a chain of similarly-themed jokes.
"Newly hatched," commented another.
The consensus was that the image was supposed to represent a 'nestling', but this still left people infuriated.
"Pretty sure this is correct¡ would have been nice if they'd show a nest of sorts to help people make the connection," said one.
"And what toddler is ever going to look at a hatching chick and think 'nestling'? It's not even in a nest!?"?
And finally, there was this well-considered response from a teacher.
"Here is my guess as a kindergarten teacher. It was probably supposed to be 'nest', but where the rug was made, perhaps in China they didn't speak English and didn't realise that the nest is the actual part the egg and chicken sit in. So they simply left the nest out of the picture."
One perplexed dad has taken to reddit thanks to his daughter's Year 3 maths homework.
"I have a degree in physics and still can't help my daughter with her maths homework!", he titled his post, alongside a photo of the problem, which asked students to solve some addition questions then circle the "odd one out".
"This is my daughter's year 3 homework," he explained in more detail later. "She can do the sums like a champ, but can't figure out which is the odd one out. And neither can I nor my wife despite a physics degree and a medical degree between us. Help?"
Thousands of people commented on the dad's post, with many finding it equally baffling.
"I'm guessing 417 as it's the only one with out a three in the 10 column", said one.
"It's an 'open question', the idea is to choose ANY but to have a REASON", wrote another.
"My brother is training to be a primary teacher and was talking this evening about how they are trying to teach maths to have multiple possibilities and not just be some rigid construct that follows a single path. Maybe this is something to do with that?," commented another.
"A maths question with 'no intended answer' would have made year 3 me panic and start crying because I didn't know the answer and would have felt like I was stupid," declared a fourth.
"Yup, I have a masters in astrophysics and stuff like this at school made me feel gaslighted and stupid," replied another.
"We need an update once this homework has been marked! You've got a whole subreddit on tenterhooks."
While the correct answer was never revealed on the thread, a teacher chimed in with the following conclusion:
"I teach year 3. I would use this question to check reasoning skills, I wouldn't care which one they picked as long as they could give a logical reason why...."
And the final laugh went to the dad:
"I asked here because I wanted witty answers rather than just correct ones. The serious answers have been interesting too."
Our brains are still spinning!
One of the most famously confusing logic problems is known as 'Cheryl's Birthday', which was first posted online by a TV host in Singapore. It even spawned an entire essay in the New York Times in 2015, in which the writer noted, "This puzzle is particularly convoluted."
"I just can't figure it out," said one utterly baffled adult.
Posted to the Facebook group Family Lockdown Tips and Tricks, this homework question left parents baffled as they couldn't derive the answer.
Even someone with a PhD in Mathematics couldn't solve the problem. Yikes.
The Holderness family shared this problem from their son's first grade homework on Facebook and were met with confusion from other users.
This question stumped so many people online that the majority were convinced there was a mistake.
The writer of the questions later explained that it was just a trick question designed to keep her students thinking.
This question was posted on Twitter, where the user said it was taken from a first grade quiz in Singapore.
Some people blame a typo for not being able to find the answer saying the two should be a 20.
So spare a thought for this dad who took to Twitter for help after he became stumped by his child's Mathematics problem.
US dad Casey Neistat asked his followers: "What am I missing here? This is for my daughter's first-grade test."
This question featured on a primary school entrance exam in Hong Kong.
Six-year-olds were expected to answer the question in 20 seconds or less. Are you smarter than a first grader? Go!
UK mum Annie Jordan shared her four-year-old daughter's very confusing homework task on Facebook.
For the picture of the hat, write 'hat'. For the picture of the hen, write 'hen'. Easy. But what about the last photo?
Someone apparently pointed out on Annie's post that if you measure the word in phonics, 'rink' does in fact fit the CVC pattern: r-i-nk.