Brain Out Level 196

Overview

Level 196 asks "What's the answer?" The board shows three rows of stopwatches. The first row adds two clocks to equal 174, the second row adds two clocks to equal 983, and the third row subtracts two clocks from each other with a question mark. At first glance the clocks look like ordinary timepieces, and you might try to read them as hours and minutes. The Brain Out trick is to read the hour hand and the minute hand as two separate digits concatenated together. Using that rule, the first two rows confirm the pattern, and the third row subtracts to 97.

• Difficulty: Hard
• Estimated moves: 2

Step-by-Step Solution

1. Look at the first row. The left clock has its hour hand on 5 and its minute hand on 1, which gives the two-digit number 51. The right clock has its hour hand on 12 and its minute hand on 3, which gives 123. Adding 51 plus 123 equals 174, matching the answer printed on the right. This confirms the rule.
2. Look at the second row. The left clock has hour hand on 9 and minute hand on 11, giving 911. The right clock has hour hand on 7 and minute hand on 2, giving 72. Adding 911 plus 72 equals 983, matching the printed answer. The rule is confirmed again.
3. Apply the same rule to the third row. The left clock has hour hand on 11 and minute hand on 3, giving 113. The right clock has hour hand on 1 and minute hand on 6, giving 16.
4. Subtract: 113 minus 16 equals 97.
5. Tap the yellow Enter field, type 97, and tap the blue OK button. The level-complete pop-up appears with the line "You're sooooooo good!" Tap Next to continue.

Strategy & Reasoning

The puzzle is a pattern-recognition problem dressed up as a clock. You are given two worked examples so you can reverse-engineer the encoding. The first row sums to 174, which is too large to be a time reading, so the clocks must be encoding digits rather than hours and minutes. Once you notice that the hour hand points to one digit and the minute hand points to another digit, the two examples line up exactly.

Reading clocks as times would give numbers like 5:05 plus 12:15, which do not sum to 174 in any obvious unit. Treating each hand as a standalone digit makes the arithmetic clean: 51 plus 123 is 174, and 911 plus 72 is 983. The third row is then 113 minus 16, which is 97.

The congratulatory line "You're sooooooo good!" is the game acknowledging that you cracked the encoding rather than guessing. This level is a small lesson in using the worked examples to infer the rule before applying it to the unknown row.

Tips & Common Mistakes

• Reading the clocks as actual times (5:05, 12:15, etc.). The hands are digits, not clock positions.
• Concatenating the hands in the wrong order. The hour hand is the first digit and the minute hand is the second digit.
• Forgetting that 11 on the hour hand is a two-digit block (113, not 11). The hour hand at 11 contributes "11" as the leading digits.