Print-It-Yourself Puzzles

Currently Playing: Tally Counter Puzzle - In how few +1 clicks can you reach 9876?

Print it yourself at https://oskarvandeventer.nl/Print-It-Yourself/. Buy at https://www.google.com/search?udm=2&q=tally+counter Tally Counter Puzzle is the serendipitous discovery that commercial tally counters happen to make an interesting puzzle. Tally counters are typically used to count people when entering a room, bus or ship. For each person, one clicks the +1 button, and the number goes up by one. The black gear at the side is turned to reset the counter back to 0000. The discovery is that one can manipulate the number cleverly by combining the +1 button and the reset knob. The puzzle is to get the counter to 9876 using as few +1 clicks as possible. The default solution is to reset to 0000 and then make 9876 +1 clicks. Smarter is to reset to 8888, and make only 988 +1 clicks. The best solution found so far is 18 +1 clicks. Is that the optimum? Copyright (c) 2026, M. Oskar van Deventer. Frequently Asked Question: http://oskarvandeventer.nl/FAQ.html Buy Oskar puzzles at https://www.puzzlemaster.ca/browse/inventors/oskar/ (USA, CA) and https://puzzleguy.store/collections/oskar-van-deventer (EU).