“When people try to make something better… they don’t think that they can remove or subtract unless they are somehow prompted to do so,” said behavioural scientist Gabrielle Adams from the University of Virginia Through a series of controlled experiments that then followed the initial puzzle problems, the team gently 'nudged' participants toward using subtraction as the answer, not addition. The results showed that when prompted that subtracting was an option, it assisted participants in considering that adding was not the only solution. Scientist Benjamin Converse, also part of the team, added "thinking in pluses instead of minuses could well contribute to modern-day excesses such as cluttered homes".