What's $\alpha+\beta$ if we have: $\alpha^3-6\alpha^2+13\alpha=1$ and $\beta^3-6\beta^2+13\beta=19$ ($\alpha$ and $\beta$ are Real) What's $\alpha+\beta$ if we have $\alpha^3-6\alpha^2+13\alpha=1$ and $\beta^3-6\beta^2+13\beta=19$? Here $\alpha$ and $\beta$ are real. 
Firstly, I subtracted the two equations and got the following:
$$\alpha^3-\beta^3-6(\alpha^2-\beta^2)+13(\alpha-\beta)=-18$$ Then I tried to factorize the left hand side as: $$(\alpha-\beta)(\alpha^2+\alpha\beta+\beta^2-6\alpha-6\beta+13)=-18$$ 
At this point it seems we can't go on!
Then I tried adding the two equations as: $$(\alpha+\beta)(\alpha^2-\alpha\beta+\beta^2-6\alpha-6\beta+13)+12\alpha\beta=20$$
unfortunately, again I can't continue!
Is there any special creativity needed for solving this question?

In order to get rid of the quadratic terms we write $\alpha:=a+2$, $\beta:=b+2$. Then
$$1=\alpha^3-6\alpha^2+13\alpha=(a+2)^3-6(a+2)^2+13(a+2)=a^3+a+10\ ,$$
and similarly
$$19=\beta^3-6\beta^2+13\beta=b^3+b+10\ .$$
It follows that $a$ and $b$ satisfy the equations
$$a^3+a=-9,\quad b^3+b=9\ .$$
Now (an unexpected) symmetry comes to our rescue: 
As $t\mapsto t^3+t$ is  monotonically increasing there is exactly one $b=:b_*>0$ satisfying the second of these equations, and it is then obvious that $a:=-b_*$ is the unique solution of the first of these equations. It follows that necessarily
$$\alpha+\beta=-b_*+2 +b_*+2=4\ .$$
