Months after returning a lost wallet to a stranger, a Redditor is sharing the “genius” way he returned the valuable item to the rightful owner.
The good Samaritan explained in a March 31 Reddit post that at some point last year he stumbled upon the lost wallet and concocted an equation for the owner to solve to figure out his phone number.
“I left a note [near where I found the wallet] in a way so only the real owner could contact me,” he wrote. “You can contact me by solving this equation: 030532468 + DD/MM/YYY = my phone number.”
The stranger would need to use their birthdate, which the person likely found on some form of identification in the wallet, and add it to the string of numbers to obtain the contact number.
“I found a wallet on a Saturday morning, so police stations were closed, and even if I left it in their mail box, it couldn’t have been retrieved until Monday,” he recalled in the comments section.
“The wallet had their ID but I couldn’t find their contact info, so I left this note near the spot I found it to give the owner a chance to contact me and get the wallet back earlier, without revealing my info to the public and to prevent random people calling me trying to get the wallet,” he added.
The Redditor also gave the stranger another option to retrieve the wallet, writing on the note, “On Monday, I will deliver it to the police station.”
The math-equation strategy, however, resulted in a happy ending.
“They contacted me later that day and I verified them with the ID,” he wrote.
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People on Reddit quickly expressed how impressed they were with the man’s method of returning the lost wallet.
“That’s actually kind of genius,” one person replied.
Another commenter wrote, “That was f—— incredible, how did he even come up with this??? ’cause it’s literally only going to be solvable by one person. it’s so highly unlikely for someone to have the same exact birthday and be in the same exact area that just lost a black wallet.”
“This is something the Riddler would leave behind,” a third reader concluded, referencing the supervillain from the Batman franchise who was known for employing puzzles and riddles to playfully get his way.
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