Head-scratching brain-teaser goes viral: How long did it take you to figure it out?

Think you’re good at puzzles and able to crack riddles with ease?

One brain teaser has taken the world by storm, and while it is super simple to answer, thousands of people have been left stumped.

The brain teaser has been posted to social media and asks participants to spot the mistake in a 1-9 number sequence.

The numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, all appear in different rainbow colours, with the question above stating: “Can you spot the the MISTAKE?”

Simple, right? There is no maths, no counting, no spelling, and no cryptic elements to it.

But thousands have been left stumped.

How long did it take for you to spot the error?

The puzzle went viral after two women posted a video of themselves attempting the brain teaser.

As predicted, the numbers are in the correct order.

They double-checked to see whether the word “mistake” had been misspelled, but to their surprise, all the words were spelled correctly.

“Is it something to do with the colours?” one of them asked.

“Is it something to do with the fact that there are two greens? Cause that’s red, orange, green, green?”

The pair continue to try and work it out but the mistake goes unnoticed.

“This is gonna kill you guys when you find out,” the man in the background chuckled.

Another option, the two women reckoned, was that the word “mistake” had been pencilled in a thicker font compared to the rest of the sentence.

They then assumed there was no error on the page.

The video ends with them not being able to work it out. Other social media users were also puzzled.

So if you haven’t worked it out, what is the answer?

Turns out there was “the the” in the first sentence.

“Took me longer than I’d like to admit, I’m tired,” one wrote.

Another added, “Had me going for a minute.”

“It’s so funny how the brain automatically corrects for stuff like this! Found it but definitely took me a bit,” a third commented.

This article was first published by the NZ Herald and is republished here with permission.