Only Connect Put Three Bizarre Symbols On Screen And Asked What Came Fourth — The Answer Is Something You’ve Probably Looked At Thousands Of Times

The three apparently meaningless shapes are hiding an incredibly familiar sequence – but recognising what you’re actually looking at is the difficult part

Only Connect has a particular talent for taking something you’ve known for most of your life and presenting it in a way that makes you wonder whether you’ve ever seen it before.

And this sequence is a perfect example.

The BBC quiz presented the Junipers — Dorjana Širola, Steve Lilley and Jim Smalley — with three strange-looking symbols followed by a question mark.

No words.

No obvious numbers.

Just a handful of horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines.

By the time all three clues were visible, the question was worth only one point.

All the team had to do was tell host Victoria Coren Mitchell what came next.

Simple?

Have a go before reading any further.

Can you work out the fourth symbol?

The sequence looked like this:

Don’t scroll down yet.

Give yourself a moment to actually study the shapes.

The first consists of three horizontal lines.

The second looks like a vertical line followed by an angular shape.

The third appears even stranger, with two diagonal strokes crossing above a horizontal line.

And then:

?

@undeniablyalex Safe to say this isn’t one of Victoria’s favourites, but I enjoyed it nonetheless! #quiz #quizshow #onlyconnect #puzzle #trivia #victoriacorenmitchell #gameshow ♬ original sound – UndeniablyAlex

The temptation is to start treating them as abstract symbols.

Perhaps you’re supposed to count the number of lines.

Maybe they’re being rotated.

Maybe one component disappears while another is added.

Or perhaps they’re mathematical symbols viewed from an unusual direction.

All of those approaches have one problem.

You’re making the puzzle more complicated than it really is.

Because these aren’t meaningless symbols at all.

In fact, you’ve almost certainly seen versions of them hundreds — possibly thousands — of times.

Need a hint?

Don’t concentrate on what each individual line is doing.

Instead, ask yourself where you might see four related symbols positioned at regular intervals.

Still nothing?

Here’s another clue.

There is a very good chance you’ve looked at the object containing them when you wanted to know whether you were early, late or had another five minutes before leaving the house.

That should make things considerably easier.

So what belongs in the fourth box?

Make your prediction now.

The answer is XII

The missing symbol is:

XII

And with that final clue in place, the entire sequence suddenly becomes recognisable.

The connection revealed on screen was:

“Roman numerals on a clock face.”

The trick is that the first three clues have been presented in the orientations in which the relevant Roman numerals appear around a clock face.

Once the sequence is understood spatially rather than as a conventional line of numbers, the strange arrangements stop looking random.

The final destination is XII — twelve — at the top of the clock.

And that’s the moment the puzzle goes from looking almost indecipherable to annoyingly familiar.

The clue was hiding in the orientation

That’s what makes this such an effective Only Connect question.

Most number sequences announce themselves as number sequences.

You might be shown:

3, 6, 9, ?

and immediately start looking for arithmetic.

Here, the underlying idea is concealed visually.

The symbols have been stripped of the context that normally makes them instantly recognisable: the circular clock face surrounding them.

Without that circle, hands and familiar positioning, your brain is encouraged to treat the lines as a code that needs deciphering.

Put them back where they belong and the mystery largely disappears.

It’s less about knowing Roman numerals than realising where you’re supposed to be looking at them from.

And the Junipers had been given every clue

The screenshot captures another important part of the pressure.

A small box above the sequence reads:

1 Point

That’s because this came from Only Connect‘s Sequences round.

Teams are shown clues progressively and must predict the fourth item. The earlier they identify the sequence, the more points are available; once all three clues have been exposed, only one point remains.

So Dorjana Širola, Steve Lilley and Jim Smalley weren’t being asked merely to identify a strange symbol.

They had reached the point where the entire pattern was available to them.

Somewhere inside those three peculiar arrangements of lines was enough information to find XII.

The challenge was seeing past their appearance.

That’s why it’s much easier after you know the answer

This is one of those puzzles where explaining the solution almost ruins your ability to appreciate how difficult it looked seconds earlier.

Once somebody says Roman numerals on a clock, it’s difficult to unsee them.

Of course that’s XII.

Of course those lines aren’t arbitrary.

Of course their orientation matters.

But before being given that mental key, they can look like three symbols from an alphabet you’ve never learned.

That’s the peculiar cruelty of Only Connect.

The programme doesn’t always beat you by asking for something you don’t know.

Sometimes it takes something you know perfectly well, removes the one piece of context that makes it familiar, and waits to see how long it takes you to put it back.

And if you spotted the clock before seeing XII, you did exactly what this puzzle was designed to make surprisingly difficult.