I'm glad you enjoyed it so much.

You're not returning true or false, which is very explicit in the description!

What happens if there are, say, four 3s?...

I've now fixed this. I wrote the original, but not the Java translation.

Yes, and I have now done exactly that.

I'm the original Kata author, but didn't write the Java translation, so it wasn't my fault, guv'nor :-)

Yes, it appears that there was an overflow problem with the Java translation.

I (original author, but not of Java translation) have now changed the Java translation to use long integers, I am hoping that this doesn't cause a problem with previous solutions.

You need to return True or False, not the strings 'true' or 'false'.

I have updated the description to make this even clearer than before.

What if there are maybe four 3's?...

Are you changing the input to the function? That will lead to mystifying errors like this.

In general, I'd agree with you that it's not terribly difficult, but there is a pit that many fall into.

That's a very interesting observation. I'll change it.

If you post your solution and mark it as a spoiler, we can look to see why you're timing out. The code pasted here doesn't look quite right.

You are mot returning whether the total is equal to the initial value, you are returning whether it is greater than or equal, which is not correct.

I'd be delighted to hear what you think is unclear so I can improve it.

That code looks like an old version. It was updated to use random values for the non-narcissistic numbers several months ago.