The internet failed this “bar” exam.
Social media is blowing a collective gasket trying to solve a mysterious “bar” puzzle going viral online.
A perplexed pub-goer had encountered the enigma during a trivia night in Sydney, Australia, earlier this week and decided to post it to Reddit with the hope that someone could help him crack it.
“From pub trivia, mate left before getting the answer, any ideas?” reads the caption to the visual riddle.
The accompanying photo shows the cryptic image, which depicts two silhouettes of female heads with checkmarks above them alongside three symbols for the men’s restroom with no ticks.
Needless to say, the supposed riddle had the Reddit braintrust racking its head like MIT students attempting to solve the math problem in “Good Will Hunting.”
Some Redditors surmised that it was a pictorial representation of the phrase “ladies and gentleman.”
Many commenters thought that it was a notice about establishment capacity with one writing, “Aaa, two’s company, three’s a crowd then.” However, critics dismissed this theory as it wouldn’t explain the sex divide between the sets of images.
Meanwhile, other commenters guessed that the image meant “happy wife happy life” while others thought it signified that men should always “double check” with the ladies.
One flustered Redditor even ran the riddle past the seemingly omnipotent AI engine ChatGPT, prompting it to respond: “Based on your description, it sounds like the rebus is representing the phrase ‘checked out the men.'”
It then provided an in-depth dissertation on how the “elements in the image correspond to this phrase.”
“Two identical silhouettes of a younger woman’s bust facing to the left with her hair in a bun,” ChatGPT theorized. “This could represent the word ‘checked,’ as in someone checking something out.”
It continued. “Above each silhouette is a check mark: This is a play on words, as the word ‘check’ can also mean to mark or verify something. Three identical pictures of the men’s bathroom symbol: This represents the word ‘men,’ as in the men’s bathroom.
“Putting it all together, we get ‘checked out the men,'” the system concluded. “I hope this helps!”
Unfortunately, even this advanced AI bot — which can formulate complex computer code and is projected to render Google obsolete — was wide of the mark.
Indeed, according to the establishment that ran the bar trivia night, the answer was simply: “Ladies first.”