Daily Challenge#3
Tower of Hanoi Daily
Today's disks start scrambled. Move them all to the right tower — a perfect run is 123 moves.
Move History & Timeline
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—No moves yet. Make your first move!
Want to choose your own size?
The classic game starts from a neat stack and plays at any size from three disks to fifteen, as many times as you like.
Play Tower of Hanoi →Scrambled boards need a plan
The trick that solves a neat stack does not survive a mixed-up one. Learn to read a position and find the disk that has to move first.
Tower of Hanoi strategies →Today's puzzle
Daily challenge #3 — . Today's board is 7 disks, rated Hard, and sits 123 moves from solved. Every player who opens this page today gets that same position — it is generated from the date rather than drawn at random, which is what makes a score worth comparing. A new one arrives at midnight UTC.
Why a scrambled start is harder than a full stack
A neat stack has a method you can learn once and repeat forever: move the top n − 1 disks out of the way, move the largest across, bring them back. From a recursive point of view the whole puzzle is that one idea applied to itself, and after a few games your hands know it.
A scrambled board takes that away. The disks are not where the method assumes they are, so the first thing to work out is which disk is in the wrong place — and the answer is always the largest one that is not yet on the goal tower. Every smaller disk — whether it is on top of it or already on the goal tower — has to be gathered on the third tower before it can move at all, and only then does the familiar pattern take over. That is exactly how the solver reasons, and it is why the shortest route from today's position is not 2ⁿ − 1 but something shorter that depends on how much of the work the scramble happened to do for you.
How the scoring works
Your efficiency is the shortest solution from today's position divided by the moves you actually played, so 100% is a perfect run and nothing can beat it. While you play, the board tells you how many moves you are behind a perfect game, and that number never goes down — once a move is wasted it stays wasted, which is what makes it honest.
Solving it yourself adds a day to your streak. Using Auto Solve or Step is allowed and still finishes the puzzle, but it resets your streak to zero — even if you had already solved today's puzzle on your own. Both the streak and today's result live in your own browser — there is no account, no server and nothing to sign up for.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Tower of Hanoi daily challenge?
One scrambled Tower of Hanoi position, the same for every player, changing at midnight UTC. Unlike the classic puzzle the disks do not start in a neat stack — they are spread across the three towers — so there is no memorised opening to fall back on. The goal is the same: every disk on the right-hand tower, and a larger disk never on a smaller one.
Is everyone playing the same puzzle?
Yes. The position is generated from the date itself rather than at random, so every visitor on a given day gets the same board and the same shortest-solution length to measure against. Nothing is sent to a server — the puzzle is computed in your own browser from the date.
How many disks does the daily challenge use?
It changes through the week: five disks on Monday and Tuesday, six from Wednesday to Friday, and seven at the weekend. Every daily position needs at least half a full game — the largest disk always has to move — so a Monday puzzle is 16 to 31 moves and a weekend puzzle 64 to 127.
How is the daily score calculated?
Against the shortest solution from today's position, which is not 2ⁿ − 1. A scrambled board is already part-solved, so its optimum is shorter than a full game's and is worked out for the exact position you are given. Efficiency is that optimum divided by the moves you actually played, so 100% means a perfect run and nothing can beat it.
How does the daily streak work?
Solve the daily puzzle without Step or Auto Solve and your streak goes up by one. Miss a day and it starts again at one. Using Step or Auto Solve is allowed and still finishes the puzzle, but it resets your streak to zero — even on a replay of a day you had already solved yourself. The streak is stored in your own browser rather than on a server, so clearing site data clears it.
Can I still play the classic Tower of Hanoi?
Yes. The classic game — three to fifteen disks, a neat starting stack, your own choice of size, as many times as you like — is on the main page and is unchanged. The daily challenge is a separate board at its own address.