This is one of those questions that tricks almost everyone the first time. You read it fast, you see the numbers, and your brain immediately goes for the math. 19 minus something equals... wait, what exactly are we subtracting?
Let's slow down. The question says "all but seven run away." That phrase is the whole trap. "All but seven" doesn't mean all seven ran away — it means every sheep except seven did. So seven stayed behind on the farm. The storm came, chaos followed, and when the dust settled, seven sheep were still standing.
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Solution:
The answer is 7.
It sounds stupidly simple once you see it, but that's the point. Our brains are pattern-hungry. We see a number problem and we start calculating before we've finished reading. The word "but" flips the meaning entirely, and we skip right past it.
This kind of riddle shows up in logic and language comprehension tests for a reason. It's not testing arithmetic — it's testing whether you actually read what's in front of you. A lot of wrong answers come from smart people who processed the sentence too quickly.
Read slow. The math isn't always the hard part. Sometimes the sentence itself is the puzzle.