Triangle Brain Teaser Has Everyone Coming Up With A Different Answer

Brain teasers can make you feel really smart, or really dumb. Whether you are figuring out something to do with physics or solving a riddle, some puzzles really make you have to think. That's the case with one that's now going viral. Though the brain teaser seems like it is incredibly easy, it is anything but.

The problem looks simple enough - all you have to do is count how many triangles are in a figure. By this point in our lives, most of us know what shapes look like and have mastered counting, yet no one can agree on how many triangles there are.

Answers to the question range from 5 to 37 and just about everything in between. However, there is only one response that is correct. Scroll down to see what it is:

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It's 18.

Here's how:

If you need a mathematician to explain it to you, Popular Mechanics reached out to Sylvester Eriksson-Bique from UCLA's math department who said that the only triangles that can be drawn in the figure need to use the top corner of the figure. From there, the base of each triangle has to be one of the three levels below the top corner. He added, "There are three levels, and on each you can choose a base among six different ways. This gives 18, or 3 times 6 triangles."

Did you get the right answer?

Photo: Getty Images, Dave Basner