Target Number

Target Number is an arithmetic-flexibility drill in the style of the number puzzles used in trading-firm cognitive assessments. You get four source numbers and a target; combine two tiles at a time with add, subtract, multiply or divide until one tile remains. All four numbers must be used, and every puzzle is generator-verified to be solvable.

Each combination replaces the two tiles you picked with their result, and that result is itself a tile. This gives you full bracketing without any bracket notation: combining 5 + 7 into 12, then 10 − 8 into 2, then 12 × 2 reaches 24 as (5 + 7) × (10 − 8). Players who assume left-to-right evaluation will fail puzzles that are perfectly solvable.

Division is only allowed when it divides evenly: no fractions ever appear on a tile. Negative intermediate results are allowed, and are sometimes the elegant path. All four source numbers must be used before the round counts as solved.

Both run the same ten puzzles, graded from many solution paths down to nearly one. Practice mode gives you 45 seconds a round to learn the mechanics. Timed mode is the assessment pace: 18 seconds a round, with the skip unlocking after 10 seconds. Timed mode is available with a premium subscription.

A skip costs one point, in both modes, so a random guess is never free. The skip button also stays locked for the first 10 seconds of a round. If the round timer runs out the round is recorded as a timeout instead, which costs nothing but scores nothing.

Search backward from the target, not forward from the numbers. Factorise the target first, then look for pairs of tiles that produce those factors; multiplication and division shrink the search space fastest. A long pause before your first move followed by a fast finish is planning; steady clicking is searching, and it is slower.