What is Mathler?

Mathler is a web puzzle by Daniel Tait. Every day you are given a target number, and you must find a specific expression the author has chosen that evaluates to that number within six guesses. 

There are three difficulty levels, easy, normal, and hard. The easy level allows only one operator and includes expressions that have four digits. The normal difficulty allows two operators and the expressions have a total of six characters. The hard difficulty adds parentheses as an option and includes up to three operators with a total of eight characters in the expression. 

Each time you make a guess you are given a response that tells your characters are in the right position, wrong position, or not in the expression at all. Characters are highlighted yellow if they are in the wrong position in the expression, green if they are in the right position, or left white if there are no more of that digit or operator In the expression.

You have six guesses to get the correct answer. You aren’t required to use the information you have used in previous guesses, for example if you know a digit is in a certain location in the expression you are not required to have every guess have that digit in that spot.

Statistics are kept to show you how often you solve the puzzle, with each difficulty level being kept separately. The site keeps track of the number of guesses it takes you to solve the puzzle, and how many times you solved the puzzle in different numbers of guesses.