Am I doing something wrong or is ROUTE broken?

Steve Rummage's icon
Routes non-matching input , ignores match

Or does Route only output bangs on match?

TFL's icon

Route removes the matching part and sends the rest, or send a bang if there was only one item. So first outlet will send a bang when you send the 5.

If you want the object to pass messages in their entirety, use [routepass] instead.

Steve Rummage's icon

Cool, thank you!