text: please help!? solve    4 - | 7x - 13 | = 12 ooooh, a tricky one (i am assuming your |..| symbols are absolute value, not parentheses): take 4 from both sides. you are left with: -|7x-13|=8 take the negative of each side: |7x-13|=-8 but any number's absolute value is positive, so there is no answer to your question.