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ArchiveSeptember 15, 2026Sleuth
Case File · Distortion · No. 057

Daily Casefile · Distortion

The Unknown Number

6 min

Below is a short first-person account. Your job is to identify (a) which cognitive distortion, if any, drives the speaker's reasoning, and (b) the exact phrase in the text that best signals it. This is a logic puzzle — the speaker is a fictional, invented person. Nothing here is therapy or clinical advice.

The scene

A home living room after a missed call from an unrecognised number appears on a mobile phone.

In the differential

  • Mind-reading
  • Fortune-telling
  • Emotional reasoning
  • Catastrophising
  • Personalisation
  • No distortion — a reasonable reaction

Play today’s Distortion.

This case first aired on September 15, 2026. A fresh distortion runs every morning — same rules, five minutes, one solution.