Figure out

• Understand / discover the reason → understand, determine, discover
• Solve a problem mentally → solve, work out, calculate
• Decide / plan → decide, determine, plan
• Figure someone out → understand a person’s character or motives

• “I figured out why the app crashes.”
• “Give me a minute to figure out the math.”
• “We’re still figuring out the schedule.”
• “I can’t figure him out.”
• “Let’s figure out what to do.”

• “I finally figured out why the app crashes.” (discovered the cause)
• “I can’t figure out what she meant.” (understand)

• “Give me a minute to figure out the math.” (calculate)
• “We figured out a way to cut costs.” (found a solution)

• “I’m still figuring out where to relocate.” (deciding)
• “Let’s figure out the schedule for next week.” (plan / decide)

• “I can’t figure him out — one day friendly, next day cold.” (understand his character)

• “Spent two hours figuring out why the webhook wasn’t firing — turned out to be a trailing slash in the URL.”
• “I can’t figure out this legacy code. Who wrote this?” (understand)
• “Once I figured out how their auth flow works, the integration took 20 minutes.”
• “Still figuring out the best DB schema for this feature.” (deciding on)
• “Claude helped me figure out the race condition.” (diagnose / understand)

“I figured out the bug (found the cause), then sorted it out (fixed it).” Figure out is understanding; sort out / fix is doing.

• “I’m trying to figure out how this washing machine works.” (understand)
• “We need to figure out what to get Mom for her birthday.” (decide)
• “It took me a while to figure out the metro system in a new city.”
• “I haven’t figured out what I want to do long-term yet.” (life plans)
• “Can you figure out how much we each owe for dinner?” (calculate)

• “I’ve figured out the root cause — fix incoming within the hour.”
• “Let me figure out the best approach and get back to you with an estimate.”
• “Still figuring out why prod behaves differently from staging — will update you by EOD.”
• “Figured it out! The API key had expired.” ✅

figure out + [noun phrase]

• I figured out the problem.
• She figured out the answer.
• We figured out a solution.

If the object is a pronoun, it must go in the middle: figure it out ✅ / figure out it ❌ · figure him out ✅

figure out + why / how / what / where / when / who + subject + verb — the most common pattern in real speech.

• I figured out why the app crashes.
• I can’t figure out how this works.
• Let’s figure out what we need.
• I figured out where the bug is.
• She figured out who sent the email.

After the wh-word, use statement order, NOT question order:

• ✅ I figured out why the deploy failed.
• ❌ I figured out why did the deploy fail.

This is a classic mistake for Ukrainian / Russian speakers.

figure out + how / what / where / when + to + verb — used when the subject is the same person.

• I figured out how to fix it.
• We need to figure out what to do.
• I can’t figure out where to put this file.
• Let’s figure out when to schedule the call.

• I figured out (that) the API key was expired. — that is usually dropped in speech.

• + noun → figure out the bug
• + it / them → figure it out
• + wh- + clause → figure out why it fails
• + wh- + to-verb → figure out how to fix it
• + that-clause → figure out that it was a typo