One Is a Lonely Number (1972)

Plotzle Expert · Puzzle #3 · April 25, 2026 · Drama

Six plot descriptions for One Is a Lonely Number (1972). One is the real plot. Five are convincing fakes. Read them and guess which is real.

1. A high school teacher assigns students to spend one weekend completely alone without technology as an experiment but the assignment reveals more about his own isolation than theirs.
2. A recently widowed accountant begins attending support groups for various illnesses he does not have and forms friendships with members who believe his fabricated stories about terminal diagnoses.
3. A woman returns to her coastal hometown after decades away and finds that her childhood best friend has become the sole resident of their abandoned neighborhood.
4. An elderly violinist who never married spends her final months recording her compositions while her estranged nephew visits weekly to discuss selling her brownstone after she dies.
5. A mathematician discovers that every breakthrough in his career coincides with the death of a colleague and he withdraws from academia to teach high school in Vermont.
6. A woman struggles to understand why her husband left her, finds living alone difficult to manage, and spends time hoping he will eventually return to her.