Dad Turns to Internet for Help After Failing to Solve 6-Year-Old’s Puzzle

A confused father turned to social media for help after struggling to complete a puzzle his 6-year-old daughter was working on.

The dad, who preferred not to be named, had taken his wife and kids out to dinner at Chuy’s restaurant in Glen Allen, Virginia, when he first encountered the puzzle. It invites young patrons to find 13 items carefully hidden in the picture of a dog enjoying a taco meal.

“We were waiting for food, and my daughter was completing the puzzle,” the dad told Newsweek. “She asked for help with this item. My wife and I couldn’t find it so I decided to post to Reddit for help.”

The puzzle challenges kids to find 13 items: a burrito, a big fish, a Chuy’s T-shirt, a lime slice, some sunglasses, a pepper, a cactus, a small fish, a taco, a popsicle, a fork, a chip and an avocado.

If you complete the puzzle, the sheet promised, you get $2 off a Chuy’s T-shirt. The only problem was that the family found itself struggling to locate the most elusive of all the objects on the list: the chip.

Engaging with puzzles at an early age can be a significant benefit to a child’s development. A study in the journal Developmental Psychology found that children who play with puzzles between the ages of 2 and 4 developed better spatial skills.

Based on video recordings of parents interacting with children and assessments when the kids reached 54 months of age, researchers concluded that the children playing with puzzles from 26 to 46 months had better spatial skills, in terms of their ability to rotate and translate shapes, than those who did not engage with toys of this type.

This ability to translate shapes is often linked to older children subsequently exploring interests in science, technology, engineering and math.

It’s clear from the nearly completed Chuy’s puzzle that the poster’s daughter has no problems with these kinds of challenges, given that she found 12 of the 13 well-hidden objects.

But the failure to find the last one evidently botheredd her father enough that he sought help. He posted the puzzle to Reddit under the handle u/NCastrinos, along with the admission that the “kids and I can’t find it.”

Can you spot the missing chip?

Some Redditors admitted the puzzle was pretty tricky for one aimed at children.

“This one took me longer than it should have,” one wrote. Another admitted: “I spent about three minutes then went to the comments hoping to learn that the whole thing was just a prank.”

A third confessed: “I just spent like 10 minutes looking for an actual chip,” while a fourth admitted: “I still can’t see it.”

Thankfully, there were plenty of other, and more eagle-eyed, puzzle fans on hand to solve the mystery of the missing chip.

One solver was happy to inform the dad that the chip was in the “rim next to the collar.” A second confirmed the chip’s whereabouts, writing: “In the wheel behind the dog’s head.”

A third offered a handy tip for finding it: “Look for the cluster of 3 dots, I found it super quick doing it that way.”

The dad was quick to respond to the puzzle solvers, offering thanks for their help. “Geez. We all feel like idiots. We looked at that thing for a solid 5 minutes. There are some happy kids now. Thanks Reddit!,” he wrote.

They definitely weren’t alone in struggling to see it. One user admitted: “If it makes you feel any better, it took me an uncomfortably long time too.”