25 or 6 Times 4

April 13, 2023 2:26 PM

Digits is a daily math puzzle, in beta from The New York Times.

The Verge and Axios have a little reportage. As is traditional with NYT puzzles, at least one site is (spoiler alert) already providing the answers.

posted by box (28 comments total)

So it's basically the numbers round from Countdown?
posted by pipeski at 2:30 PM on April 13, 2023 [18 favorites]

I have some complaints about how the gameplay works on this one!
1) There's no disincentive to playing for as long as it takes to get 15 stars; there's no way to see either a) how efficient you were vs. the least possible moves *or* b) how quickly you solved it, either just for reference or compared to some sort of ranking.
2) There's no way to see your stats over the past week!
3) The difficulty seems pretty flat, both puzzle-to-puzzle and day-to-day.

The interface seems good for the game it is, but I'm just not sure there's a way to turn this into something quite as compelling as Wordle. As it stands, the only thing you can really tell when someone shares their stats is whether they've got the attention span to keep trying until they get the full 15 stars.
posted by sagc at 2:30 PM on April 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

Factor the numbers and you're 90% of the way there. There's not a lot of replayability here.
posted by momus_window at 2:31 PM on April 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

Factor the numbers and you're 90% of the way there. There's not a lot of replayability here

Yep.
posted by Well I never at 2:43 PM on April 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Nice job with the title.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:46 PM on April 13, 2023 [16 favorites]

So it's basically the numbers round from Countdown?

No, this is Street Countdown. And no Carol or Rachel.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:48 PM on April 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have a vague memory of having seen something like this in a French TV quiz show some twenty years ago.
posted by WalkingAround at 2:49 PM on April 13, 2023

Factor the numbers and you're 90% of the way there. There's not a lot of replayability here

Nonetheless I am enjoying it, because I like mildly challenging games I can always win.
posted by Well I never at 2:49 PM on April 13, 2023 [7 favorites]

It's a fun game and after solving the final one I wanted more but not enough to play every day. Wordle and all of its variants seem to have burned that out of me.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:12 PM on April 13, 2023

I have a vague memory of having seen something like this in a French TV quiz show some twenty years ago.

Yes, WalkingAround, you did not hallucinate: It is a game show called Des Chiffres et des lettres (or some numbers and some letters). It's been running since 1965 (!) and even inspired the british game of Countdown

It has two kinds of rounds: In the "Chiffre" one, you are given a bunch of numbers and have to create a series of operations to reach a target number (pretty much like the Digits game). In the "Lettres" one, you are given individual letters and have to create the longest possible word.

Bonus points if you reach the numerical target in the fewest steps or if you use the most letters to create the longest word.

In typical French style, once you present your answer, an expert then usually shows (s)he can beat your solution with a more effective or more elegant one!

"Le Compte Est Bon!" (that's what you say when you solve the numbers round)
posted by Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... at 3:21 PM on April 13, 2023 [7 favorites]

I've been playing Summle and Summle Hard for about 7-8 months, they're the Numbers Round from Countdown.

Thank Previously for Murdle.com
posted by k3ninho at 3:41 PM on April 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

Ha. Let's see old chatGPT solve this one.

[chatGPT solves it easily]

Ah, well, nevertheless.
posted by logicpunk at 3:41 PM on April 13, 2023

So it's basically the numbers round from Countdown?

I’d feel more at ease if I could say, “Two large and four small, please, Rachel.”
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:07 PM on April 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

Giving up, I close my eyes
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:19 PM on April 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

Digits #4 (15/15⭐)
94 (94)   ✖➖➖
195 (195) ➕✖
251 (251) ➕✖➕
382 (382) ✖✖➖➕
456 (456) ➕➖➗➗✖
posted by larrybob at 5:05 PM on April 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

I prefer Mathler.
I couldn't wait for the 'Hey, you're really good at this!' come-on like Spelling Bee.
posted by MtDewd at 5:32 PM on April 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

I am only good at the 8 out of 10 Cats version of Countdown, but having time to work on these made them more fun to me.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:54 PM on April 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

That's Numberwang!
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 6:00 PM on April 13, 2023 [10 favorites]

I'm afraid they're going to drop sudoku (which is already relegated, alone, to the "other games" tab) because of this. Coming on the heels of dropping acrostic puzzles, this will make my nerdy heart extra-sad.
posted by Sweetie Darling at 6:05 PM on April 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

They better not. NYT sudoku is one of the highlights of my day.
posted by kevinbelt at 6:32 PM on April 13, 2023

whi is not this called numerle
posted by not_on_display at 6:42 PM on April 13, 2023

Because this is ?
posted by nat at 8:27 PM on April 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Factor the numbers and you're 90% of the way there.

Nope.
posted by intermod at 9:08 PM on April 14, 2023

Just before Digits started, I was thinking a math-based game would be fun, but one more closely aligned to Wordle. So 1 Across would be, for example, what is Pi?
And 1 Down would be the first two digts of a Long Play Record speed. Or whatever.
PS, I'm terrible at all things math, and so this may well be a terrible idea.
posted by etaoin at 7:58 PM on April 15, 2023

The best translation from Wordle to math is nerdle, imho:
nerdlegame
posted by jacquilynne at 9:31 PM on April 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

I always liked the Countdown numbers round best. I looked for an app version of it when I first had an iPhone, but came up empty-handed, and forgot about it. So I'm very pleased to see this! It's earned itself a place in my pinned browser tabs.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 7:23 AM on April 16, 2023

I prefer Mathler.
So after playing Digits and nerdle for a week and a half, I'm kind of liking both of these, though I still prefer Mathler.
The last two Digits puzzles of the day usually take me longer than I'd like to spend but, hey, I'm retired.
posted by MtDewd at 2:16 PM on April 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Math nerd Wordle varian nerdle has a Star Wars day special edition
posted by larrybob at 10:16 AM on May 4, 2023 [1 favorite]