Number Crunch

What Number Crunch is

Number Crunch gives you one move, tapping a square to raise its number, and a grid of digits to clear with it. Whenever three or more matching numbers sit next to each other they burst off the board, and the whole job is emptying the grid with as few taps as you can manage. Jason Cashdollar made it.

How a round works

The board opens with a Moves counter at zero. Since a tap only ever lifts a value, the work is in nudging neighbors up toward the same number until a group of three or more touching squares matches and pops. The built-in tutorial demonstrates with a short row of 4, 4 and 3, which needs tapping until all three agree. Every tap goes on your total, and there is no clock on screen, so a careful plan is worth more than speed. On November 4 the puzzle, #288, laid out 25 squares holding digits between 1 and 9. A Restart button resets the board if a plan goes wrong.

Good if you like…

• Rotaboxes: Rotaboxes also counts every click against an ideal total, though each click turns a photo tile toward upright rather than raising a number in a grid.
• Bloom: Bloom is another fewest-moves grid puzzle, but you flood colors outward from the top-left cell to fill a 14x14 board and compare your count with par.
• Petals: Petals shares the pop-when-three-match rule, linking at least three same-colored petals, but it runs on a 90-second clock and scores points instead of counting moves.
• Dozenal: Dozenal works on a numbered grid too, merging tiles into groups that total exactly 12, and keeps a practice puzzle and an archive of earlier days.

Who makes it

Number Crunch is made by Jason Cashdollar.

What we checked

• Loads: yes, over HTTPS (opened Nov 5, 2026).
• On a phone: the page sets a mobile viewport and fits a phone screen without sideways scrolling.
• Embedding: the game’s site allows being shown inside other sites.
• Account: none needed for the daily puzzle.