You can play new daily Digits puzzles
This tool lets you view all of the potential solutions to a Digits puzzle. Enter the goal number and the five starting numbers separated by a comma like “1,2,3,4,5” and hit the “Calculate Solutions” button to see all of the possible solutions to the puzzle. The list is likely quite long so you’ll probably need to scroll through all of the solutions in the list.
There is also a checkbox that lets you remove transpositions, which are operations that occur in different orders but the same set of operations are used to achieve the final number. For example, where the first two operations appear in reverse order and then are added together in the 3rd operation to hit the target.
e.g. these two solutions are an example of a transposition.
5 + 10 = 15 15 / 3 = 5 5 * 20 = 100
vs
15 / 3 = 5 5 + 10 = 15 5 * 20 = 100
Tools
A version of the solution code is written in Python code and is used to generate the puzzles. This code is re-written in javascript so it is solved inside the browser and the visuals are made with javascript, CSS and HTML and the graphs are made using the open source Plotly javascript graphing library.
Please share Digits with your friends, family, colleagues, math teachers, students and anyone else you think might enjoy this math puzzle game
It’s great to hear from all the folks who have taken the time to play Digits and let me know. I’m glad that so many people are enjoying it.
Missing the NYT Digits game? You can still play it here.
On August 8th, 2023, the New York Times ended the beta for their Digits math game and the game is no longer playable. About a week prior to that, a friend asked me to create a clone of Digits so he and his daughter could keep playing together. I had never played before but tried it out. Not surprisingly, since I like games, puzzles and math, I found it to be quite fun. I’m always looking out for interesting things to make, so I figured it would be a fun challenge. I’d previously made some variants of the popular Wordle Game: Wordguessr, Tridle and Scrabwordle.
The rules for Digits are relatively simple just like in the NYT version. Each day you are given 5 puzzles to complete. Every puzzle has a target number and 6 individual starting numbers that you must use in mathematical calculations to try and create the target number. Each of the 6 numbers can only be used once but the answer to a given math calculation becomes a new number to use.
Once you finish one puzzle, you can use the tabs at the top to move to another puzzle.
You get up to 3 stars for each puzzle:
3 stars if you match the target
2 stars if your number is within 10 of the target
1 star if your number is within 25 of the target
Auto-Advance – Click on the gear to toggle on and off “auto-advance”. When enabled, the game will cue up the next puzzle if you hit the target.
Chainmode – Click on the gear to toggle on and off “chainmode”. When enabled, it will automatically highlight the answer from the previous calculation to be the first number in the new calculation.
Share – Share your Digits stars on social media using the share button, which will copy your results to your clipboard.
# button – clicking the # button lets you see the total number of possible solutions as well as the fewest and most operations that can yield a solution. This can bring an extra element of challenge to the game. See if you can achieve the shortest solution and then try again to achieve the longest solution. Clicking on the buttons reveals one of the solutions that have the fewest and most number of operations.
Hopefully you’ll find this replacement to the NYTimes Digits math game a fun and interesting game and improve your mathematical thinking. Let me know if you find any bugs or have any suggestions.
I’m guessing it wasn’t as popular as some of their other games. Wordle and the crossword puzzle are probably the most popular. And they seem to be pushing their new game Connections as a sort of replacement for Digits. But alot of folks like math games so it’s a bit of a shame that they discontinued it, especially since it’s simple to learn how to play but can be challenging to get the solution each time.
Tools
Python code was used to generate the puzzles and the game play and visuals were created in javascript, CSS and HTML.
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