4-year-old numberist

[Jon O'Neill]

Anyone seen this kid Acer on Instagram / TikTok? https://www.instagram.com/daddylmg/
If these are legitimately being solved in real time then this kid is surely coming for the GOAT position, or may already be up there as there are some seriously good bullet solves.
Even if they're not being solved by him, it's extremely impressive that he can recall the solutions.

[Fiona T]

Yeah I stuck him in one of the spoilers threads cos technically they are

Can't be sure about legitimacy, but they look legit, and as one of the comments said, you try getting a 4 year old to learn a script and recite it that convincingly - easier to do the maths! School will be in for a fun time when he has to spend the first two years learning to add up to 10.

[Thomas Cappleman]

Definitely feels like some working out beforehand then filming for some. Like fair play if he's coming up with this method in 2 seconds, but seems unlikely: https://www.instagram.com/p/DSKpqO7CKnC/. Clearly is very smart though, and fluent with numbers. Unless it is entirely as it seems, would love to see the process of him actually working them out.

[Martin Hurst]

Surely you would live stream it to avoid the obvious suspicion?

[Patrick Thompson]

I’m very sceptical this is genuine, it’s a pretty tough 4 large and I reckon it would be missed by the vast majority of aptertites.

[John Garcia]

Can't be sure about legitimacy, but they look legit, and as one of the comments said, you try getting a 4 year old to learn a script and recite it that convincingly - easier to do the maths!

In this instance learning a script is impressive, but way more realistic than what this kid is apparently doing which is coming up with a solution barely even looking at the numbers or doing any working out. He's clearly a smart kid to be able to reproduce the solution. But he would be in genius / savant territory if he can do that barely looking. I suspect some judicious editing. One thing geezer could do is record it live & flick between channels to show it's live, then lets see how the kid does.

[Gavin Chipper]

Fake, not really that impressive in the general scheme of things, and you have to wonder about the personality of the geezer setting this up.

As John says above, he's clearly not spending any time working it out. Obviously scripted.

[Gavin Chipper]

Definitely feels like some working out beforehand then filming for some. Like fair play if he's coming up with this method in 2 seconds, but seems unlikely: https://www.instagram.com/p/DSKpqO7CKnC/. Clearly is very smart though, and fluent with numbers. Unless it is entirely as it seems, would love to see the process of him actually working them out.

Also in this one he was shouting that the contestants only got 607 even though he definitely wasn't paying attention to the contestant declaring 607.

I mean the most generous interpretation is that what you see on camera is a reconstruction of events.

[Jon O'Neill]

National press now: https://archive.is/LhDnN

Also has posted some real time solves including this one: https://www.instagram.com/p/DSib2p5CEgt/
That looks convincingly a solve by hime. It has a few steps in it. We can probably rule out that "all" he is doing is regurgitating other solutions..

Of course, the unintuitive approach to 608 posted by TCap, and this one https://www.instagram.com/p/DSKoNcaiDDt/ seem pretty certainly not solved by him in real time, since it took 10+ seconds for him to do a relatively straightforward 1 large in the link above. Does that throw doubt onto the whole thing? I don't think so.

I think it's freakishly impressive.

[Gavin Chipper]

Well I think as we discussed off forum, the fact that he solved that easier one in more time than the other harder ones pretty much shows the other ones to be not legitimate. He may have solved some of them in some amount of time, but the filming would have been afterwards and a "reconstruction". But they can't be trusted.

The 720 solve is impressive for a 4-year-old in that it's impressive for a 4-year-old to do a Countdown numbers game at all - because it's an easy solve in the general scheme of things. But I'm not sure it's freakishly impressive. It's very difficult to really know what percentage of 4-year-olds could do that with the right encouragement / training, and I think we'd all be guessing. My intuition is that it wouldn't be insanely out of the ordinary, though certainly good. But when we only have a very rough idea about probabilities, it's always worth remembering that likely things are more likely to happen than unlikely things.

[Thomas Cappleman]

That's what I wanted to see - proper live solves in the app. And as you both said, shows that the others definitely aren't live, but may well be how he solved them himself.

And this is way beyond ordinary. We realised when using the app with our nephew, probably when he was 4 or 5, that even knowing 3 digit numbers isn't in the syllabus until year 3 (age 7-8). Our nephew's got 2 parents with maths degrees, so likely to be smart in that area, and he's nowhere near what Acer's doing even now. Even what he's doing in the live ones is extremely impressive for that age

[John Garcia]

Well I think as we discussed off forum, the fact that he solved that easier one in more time than the other harder ones pretty much shows the other ones to be not legitimate. He may have solved some of them in some amount of time, but the filming would have been afterwards and a "reconstruction". But they can't be trusted.

I agree with this 100%. This was a ridiculously easy solve, which the kid struggled to get in 30 seconds. Impressive for a 4 year old? Somewhat, but nothing freakish, and certainly not newsworthy at that ability. What it does do is throw the earlier videos into doubt.

[Gavin Chipper]

That's what I wanted to see - proper live solves in the app. And as you both said, shows that the others definitely aren't live, but may well be how he solved them himself.

And this is way beyond ordinary. We realised when using the app with our nephew, probably when he was 4 or 5, that even knowing 3 digit numbers isn't in the syllabus until year 3 (age 7-8). Our nephew's got 2 parents with maths degrees, so likely to be smart in that area, and he's nowhere near what Acer's doing even now. Even what he's doing in the live ones is extremely impressive for that age

The thing about the syllabus - that just shows that most children wouldn't be able to do numbers games because they haven't been exposed to the right stuff for it. But how many could if their parents decided that Countdown numbers were a thing for them to do?

[John Garcia]

A significant proportion of the comments on the Daily Mail article also think this is fake:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... s-job.html

[Jon O'Neill]

A significant proportion of the comments on the Daily Mail article also think this is fake:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... s-job.html

Totally irrelevant... that's an absolute swamp and they have no concept of the numbers game in the way that we do.
This you Gev?:


So we probably all agree now that the kid can do straightforward numbers games. I think that's incredible.

I have to say, I really have my doubts that someone who takes 10-15 seconds on some simpler ones solved those hard ones without some help, in any length of time. And the dad making his kid subscribable (paying a monthly fee to a creator for exclusive content and benefits, like special Stories, Lives, Reels, posts, and subscriber-only chats) and "DM for collabs" makes it feel grifty and exploitative. It's a good grift though and I guess it's no different to child acting/modelling etc.

[Jon O'Neill]

That's what I wanted to see - proper live solves in the app. And as you both said, shows that the others definitely aren't live, but may well be how he solved them himself.

And this is way beyond ordinary. We realised when using the app with our nephew, probably when he was 4 or 5, that even knowing 3 digit numbers isn't in the syllabus until year 3 (age 7-8). Our nephew's got 2 parents with maths degrees, so likely to be smart in that area, and he's nowhere near what Acer's doing even now. Even what he's doing in the live ones is extremely impressive for that age

The thing about the syllabus - that just shows that most children wouldn't be able to do numbers games because they haven't been exposed to the right stuff for it. But how many could if their parents decided that Countdown numbers were a thing for them to do?

I think most kids get introduced to the concept of counting and basic arithmetic very young, and if they show aptitude they get challenged by parents. In my admittedly limited parental experience, you can't really force it. They just kind of go at their own pace. I guess of course you could go to extremes like this lunatic. It doesn't strike me that this is the case here. I think the kid is just insanely bright.

[Philip A]

There are very good numbers players without Apterous, and a long-serving Apterite can still be beaten by a very good home player. Just saying!

There’s a kids’ show called Numberblocks which introduces numbers in a very clever way to teach under 6s maths and arithmetic. Friends of my distant family have a son who learnt his times tables aged 2 thanks to the Numberblocks. He has a natural instinction to learn things.

Irrespective of whether these vids are genuine or not, it’d be interesting to see if the kid actually can go on do it at an older age! I think a 5-year-old audience member once beat Carol.

[Martin Hurst]

Well I think as we discussed off forum, the fact that he solved that easier one in more time than the other harder ones pretty much shows the other ones to be not legitimate. He may have solved some of them in some amount of time, but the filming would have been afterwards and a "reconstruction". But they can't be trusted.

I agree with this 100%. This was a ridiculously easy solve, which the kid struggled to get in 30 seconds. Impressive for a 4 year old? Somewhat, but nothing freakish, and certainly not newsworthy at that ability. What it does do is throw the earlier videos into doubt.

And also do we know that he didn't fail 50 attempts on other rounds before he got this one right? A bit like those videos where people take "impossible" shots with a basketball where they have been blatantly attempting it all day.

A very good grift is my vote.