Brain Teaser: How Often Does the Number 1 Show Up on a Digital Clock Each Day?

Do you love solving brain teasers? Are you looking for a fun brain teaser on a Friday morning? If so, we have one for you that will surely leave you hooked to your screen for quite some time. The brain teaser challenges people to decipher how many times a particular number will appear on a digital clock in 24 hours. Do you think can you solve this one? If so, can you do this without using a calculator?

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“How many times per day does the number 1 appear?” reads the caption to the brain teaser shared on Reddit.

The text on the teaser reads, “Digital display. On a clock with a digital display, how many times per day does the number 1 appear?”

The original poster of this brain teaser also provided the Redditors with a clarification that the digital clock is 24 hours.

Take a look at the brain teaser here:

Were you able to solve this brain teaser? If so, what answer did you get?

Here’s how puzzle lovers reacted to this brain teaser here:

“Question: 12-hour clock or 24-hour clock?” wrote an individual.

Another added, “Question: If 1 appears in 1:00, does that count as one appearance for the whole hour? 60 appearances, one for each minute? 3600 appearances, one for each second? Etc.”

“There are no seconds displayed, so not 3600. I interpret it as 1 per minute (so, counting 1111 as 4, and 1112 as 3 more). I get 984 for a 12-hour clock, 1164 for 24 hours,” claimed a third.

A fourth commented, “24h clock: 172 total appearances. 10h 1 time, 1h 3 times, 10m 24 times, 1m 144 times.”

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“This is a very vague question with multiple answers. Are we using the clock that is shown or is the second timer? Are we using the 12-hour or 24-hour type? Does the question mean each time 1 shows? All of these have different answers,” shared yet another.

A sixth joined, “I read it as asking out of the total number of times that will be shown during a day, how many contain the number 1. Under that logic, I get 900. 60 times per hour * 24 hours = 1440 separate displays. The minutes will contain a 1 at 01, 21, 31, 41, 51 plus everything from 10-19. That’s 15 total. Any hour that contains a 1 will inherently have a 1 for all 60 minutes. The 00.00 implies a 24-hour clock. The hours of 0, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 20, 22, & 23 will each have 15 minutes displayed containing a 1. The hours 1, 10-19, & 21 will each have 60 minutes displayed containing a 1. 12 * 15 = 180. 12 * 60 = 720. 900 of the 1440 different displays contain a 1.”