A dad became frustrated when his son said he had to cheat to finish a word puzzle, only to realize it was the only way to complete it.
The father, who asked not to be named but uses Reddit under the name u/caynemorgan, took to the r/MildlyInfuriating sub on December 14 where he shared a page from a word puzzle book his young son had been working on.
Called Follow the Path, the aim is to find the word "Lizard" in the wordsearch, and track it all the way to the finish line out of the puzzle.
The poster captioned the photo: "My kid got frustrated, so he just decided to 'cheat.' At first I was upset with him, then I realized he was right."
Because, his son's blue pencil tracks all around the puzzle using the word Lizard, but exits the away from the finish line, because there is no way to actually reach that finish line.
The dad, aged 38 and living in the Midwest of the United States, said his 5-year-old son was working on a Spider-Man puzzle book while he did housework.
"My son is still learning his letters, so we were focusing on some of the word puzzles that morning," the poster told Newsweek. "Most of the time, we would do the first puzzle together and, when he came across a page with the same type of puzzle, he could usually handle it on his own.
"He likes to show off his work, so, even when he does a page on his own, he usually has me come over and check it out."
In this case, the boy and his dad had previously tackled a Follow the Path puzzle together, so he knew what to do. But, this time, when calling his dad over to have a look at the completed puzzle, he said: "I had to cheat."
At 5 years old, his dad said his son is "still learning a lot, not just letters and words in an activity book; he's also learning about right and wrong, how to follow rules, and how to be a good big brother."
"He hadn't really talked about cheating before but I don't really want cheating to be my son's default option when he can't 'win'," u/caynemorgan told Newsweek. But as the dad was trying to figure out how to explain that cheating is never OK, he saw the book and realized "there was no real solution to this page."
"I couldn't help but laugh at how he solved this puzzle. I told him that he didn't really cheat, there was a mistake in the puzzle," the dad said.
His Reddit post proved popular, racking up over 68,000 upvotes, as some pointed out there was an extra 'Lizard' in the puzzle that leads to nowhere, and the word 'drugs' had also been included in the middle of it.
Others complained, one writing "that puzzle is actually unsolvable," and another despairing: "This is such a good analogy for what it's like being a millennial."
And one asked "why were you upset with him over a coloring book," but as the dad told Newsweek: "I think the title of my post may have been misleading because I'm trying to get across the story in a few words to explain the post.
"When I wrote 'I was upset' in the title of my post, it's easy for people to take that completely out of context," he said, suggesting "maybe people thought that I was 'mildly infuriated' with my kid for cheating. But in reality, I was mildly infuriated with the puzzle design."
With the huge response to his Reddit post, and replying and interacting with the hundreds of commenters, "I have spent far more time in the comments … than my son and I spent on the puzzle.
"It's wild how consuming a viral post on the internet can be!" the dad added.
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