find the solution

[Will17]

Hello,
Is the use of "find " correct here please? Would it be better to use "find out"?
" To solve the riddle, you need to find "who lives where""
Thanks
Will

[5jj]

Both 'find' and 'find out' are fine.

[TomUK]

I am just a humble student of the English language, but when I read the example sentence I feel a certain je ne sais quoi - maybe you could call it gutfeeling - that "find out" is correct here and with only "find" there seems to be something missing. If "who lives where" would be worded differently (e.g. "the persons living in these houses") then I could accept "find" as the correct answer.

TomUK

[birdeen's call]

Like 5jj, I see nothing wrong with just "find". What do you think about this sentence, Tom?

He found that nobody knew.

[5jj]

... when I read the example sentence I feel ... that "find out" is correct here and with only "find" there seems to be something missing.

Both 'find' and 'find out' are fine, as I said.

COCA gives 105 examples of ‘find who’. Some of them are like this: “There may be people we find who didn't get out and will be in the rubble”, which is grammatically different, but most are like this: “Did we find who made the phone call last night?” Many people would, of course use 'out' in that second sentence, but it is not essential.


There were 169 examples of ‘find where'; I stopped there.

[TomUK]

After reading all the above I have found that I need to find the time to find out about all the uses of the word 'find'. (I hope I won't get fined for this.)

TomUK