I can't get past the second stage of reasoning

The 16 vs. 88 problem is due to the overloaded plus-sign (it is used for both string concatenation and addition). System.out.println(8+8) will give you 16, but you can prevent this if you use Strings instead of integers. System.out.println("8" + "8") will give you 88, just as you want it. So consider using a String variable roughly like this: String b = "8"; Now for the triangular repetition-part: (just a few hints in case you still want to do this on your own): There are obviously many ways to achieve this. 1. For example, you can work with the System.out.print()-method (without the LN at the end). This method does not insert a line break, have a look:

System.out.print("8");
System.out.print("8");
//will not give you:
8
8
//but instead give you:
88

2. Another way of thinking about it is the following: What do you actually want to do here? First, you want to print a String with content "8", then you want to add another "8" to the String and print it again. Then you put another "8" at the end of that very same String and print it again... some rough pseudocode:

String str = "8";
System.out.println(str);
str = str + "8"
System.out.println(str);
and so on...