Daily 24 Puzzle

In response to the Covid-19 alert we are presenting a daily puzzle

24 is a good game to practice your arithmetic. It is usually played by dealing four playing cards, but car license plates in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are ideal for it. So that you don’t have to leave your home, we are providing you with licence plates every day.

The aim is to make 24 using the set of numbers to the right of the plate. You can use addition, subtraction, division and multiplication, but you must use all of the digits.   We will be posting new plates each day randomly generated. You’ll be surprised how many of them can make up 24.

Variations

For younger players:

If you cant make 24 –

• How close can you get?
• Can you make 24 if you don’t use all the digits?

For older players, additional rules you might like to use

1. Use powers and roots X^y _y√X  (To raise something to a power the exponent (if needed) must also be present. For example, to square a number a 2 must be available. To take the cube root of a number a 3 must be available)
2. You may link adjacent numbers to form multi-digit numbers as long as the order is kept. For example: 1221 could become 12*2*1
3. You can use factorials ie 4! = 4*3*2*1 = 24

There are a few not-so-obvious “tricks” that you can do with moves 1. and 3.