New game - Get to target number 6174

General Fun and games
1

Sitting here idling away the hours, I have come up with a game based on an article someone sent me about the number 6174 which has some mathematical properties that apparently are “interesting”.

Here is the game.

Hopefully you can follow the instructions and will accept the challenge :slight_smile:

A game using numbers

Objective – arrive at number 6174 by doing the below steps

Click hare to see steps

Step 1

Choose any four-digit number e.g. 2345. The digits can be any digits from 0 to 9. The only rule is they can’t all be the same digit i.e. 5555 is not allowed, but 5551 is allowed. So the only rule is the four digits must be made up of at least two unique digits.

Step 2

Order the digits of your chosen number in descending order.

So 2345 becomes 5432 (ref: Number 1)

Step 3

Order the digits of your chosen number in ascending order.

So 2345 becomes 2345 (ref: Number 2) Note in this example the number was already in ascending order but your chosen number may not be and so you should order it (e.g. 4751 would become 1457)

Step 4

Subtract Number 2 (from step 3) from Number 1 (from step 2) to give you Number 3

Formula

Number 3 = Number 1 – Number 2

So in my example.

Chosen number was 2345

Number 1 (ascending) was 5432

Number 2 (descending) was 2345

Number 3 = 5432 – 2345

Number 3 = 3087.

Using number 3 go back and repeat steps 2, 3 and 4.

Repeat these steps until you arrive at Number 3 = 6174

Your goal is use the above steps to arrive at number 6174 and you have to count the number of iterations it takes you to get to the end result of 6174.

Can you find the four-digit number that takes the least number of steps to arrive at the 6174 end number?

Post your number and the iterations taken here if you fancy playing along.

I’ll kick this off with 1972 as my starting number and this needs 10 steps to arrive at 6174.

Click hare to see my steps
Chosen # # 1 # 2 # 3 Step
1972 9721 1279 8442 1
8442 8442 2448 5994 2
5994 9954 4599 5355 3
5355 5553 3555 1998 4
1998 9981 1899 8082 5
8082 8802 0288 8514 6
8514 8514 1458 7056 7
7056 7650 0567 7083 8
7083 8730 0378 8352 9
8352 8532 2358 6174 10

Thank you and have fun !!
Namaste|
:pray:

3 Likes
2

Will give this a miss. Maths was never my best subject. Then again what was :joy:

3 Likes
3

I confess, I cheated and used AI to do this but I’m not telling anyone :joy: Out of curiosity, I wondered if this could be done using words and, indeed, if the letters are assigned their equivocal alphabetical number, it can. Would make a nice, little code crack for a spy narrative.

3 Likes
4

1966 9661 1669 7992

7992 9972 2799 7173

7173 7731 1377 6354

6354 6543 3456 3087

3087 8730 0378 8352

8352 8532 2358 6174

2 Likes