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Numbers game

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Revision as of 14:45, 27 April 2010 by JohnnyCanuck (talk | contribs) (another no-no)

The numbers game was played as rounds 4 and 8 in the 9 round format, and is played as rounds 5, 10 and 14 in the 15 round format.

Example of one of Jon O'Neill's numbers games.

The game involves a board of 24 numbered cards, initially arranged face down in a layout of four rows as follows:

  • The top row contains four cards, which are 25, 50, 75 and 100. (During Episode S26, a special between the 2009 series champions Chris Davies and Kirk Bevins, the large numbers were replaced with 12, 37, and two others that were not revealed but are suspected to be 62 and 87.)
  • The remaining three rows (currently) contain six, seven and seven cards respectively; these cards are two each of the integers between 1 and 10 inclusive.

One contestant chooses from where in this layout six numbers are to be picked. A three-digit target number is then generated by CECIL, and the contestants have 30 seconds to make the target number (or as near to it as possible) from some or all of the six numbers. The target can range anywhere from 101 to 999, although until at least Championship of Champions VIII a few games also used targets of 100.

Each of the six chosen numbers may be used only once in any solution. Only addition, subtraction, multiplication and division may be used; moreover, no fractional numbers or negative numbers may appear as part of a solution.

Techniques

The most commonly chosen selection is one large number. An example would be:

75, 2, 5, 6, 1 4 — TARGET: 273

The most common technique is to find the closest multiple of the large number and make the difference with the remaining numbers. Here, the closest multiple is 300 (75 x 4) which leaves a difference of 27 between 300 and 273. So the game can be solved in the following way:

  • 75 × 4 = 300
  • 5 × 6 − 2 − 1 = 27
  • 300 − 27 = 273

A variation on this method is to add or take away a number from the largest number. This case we could do (75 − 6) × 4 which is equal to 75 × 4 − 6 × 4. The solution could be:

  • (75 − 6) × 4 = 276
  • 276 − 2 − 1 = 273

With very low targets, usually under 200, it's possible to use the large number last and add it on. In this case we would need to make 198 from the remaining numbers, which is not possible in this case.

The scoring system is as follows:

  • 10 points for reaching the target exactly.
  • 7 points for getting within 5 of the target, higher or lower. For example 765 or 775 for a target of 770.
  • 5 points for getting within 10 of the target. For example 760 or 780 for a target of 770.

Only the contestant whose solution is nearest the target scores.

See also