ohh okhay

It seems you're confused about what to return, it's not the number with a single digit, it's the number of steps it takes you to get it.

Nope those are the default test codes. It shows the same after reset. Even if I change them manually, everything test case pass for test but not attempt and submit.

These are the Sample Tests for Ruby:

describe "Persistence" do
  it "Basic tests" do
    Test.assert_equals(persistence(39),3)
    Test.assert_equals(persistence(4),0)
    Test.assert_equals(persistence(25),2)
    Test.assert_equals(persistence(999),4)
    Test.assert_equals(persistence(444),3)
  end
end

Click reset if you see other thing.