A confused dad turned to social media for help after finding himself struggling to complete his young son's homework assignment.
Homework can be a time consuming experience for both children and their parents alike.
A 2018 study of 27,500 parents across the world conducted by education charity the Varkey Foundation, revealed parents spend an average of 6.7 hours per week on their child's homework.
That's a significant amount of time and may go some way to explaining the sense of frustration felt by one dad, who took to Reddit, posting under the handle u/macadelicmiller to vent at the confusing assignment handed to his son.
While it is frustrating enough for a parent to spend a significant amount of their time on a child's homework assignment, it's a whole other level of annoyance if they can't actually complete it.
As the post shared to Reddit shows, that was the situation this particular dad found himself in and he couldn't quite understand why.
On first glance, the assignment appears simple enough. The sheet presents a drawing of six ordinary items with three different letters, each circled, written underneath each one.
Titled "Ending Letters" the sheet says: "Look at each picture, then color in the correct sound the word ends with. Color the pictures."
While the coloring section of the homework is no issue, there is a problem with one of the six pictures and its accompanying choice of letters.
One picture is clearly that of a basket, a word that ends in the letter "t." However, the choices of "end letter" offered as potential answers on the sheet are "B," "S" and "K."
Posting a screenshot of the question to Reddit, the dad behind the u/macadelicmiller account appears convinced it is a "homework typo" but he's not entirely sure. "Am I crazy or is this obviously wrong?" he asks followers.
The post proved popular, earning over 10,000 upvotes. Most seemed happy to poke fun at the situation. One use suggested the answer could be "baskek," while another suggested "picnik." A third took things in an even wilder direction, commenting: "It's a trick question. Everything is in English except the 5th puzzle. The word for basket in Polish is 'Koszyk.'"
One user did offer up a reasonably sensible suggestion. "I might advise the kid to make his own T in a circle, but you never know how the teacher might react. I'd tell the kid I'd support him. Might be a good first lesson in the fallibility of authority," they wrote.
Whether the dad behind the post took up that suggestion is not known. Newsweek has contacted u/macadelicmiller for comment.