What Do We Do Now 2 Hooda Math

So You Need to Finish What Do We Do Now 2 Hooda Math

This is a puzzle-based math game where you arrange numbers and operations to reach target values. The levels get progressively harder and the constraints tighter. I've been running through these with students for years, and the core issue everyone hits is the same: they try to brute force instead of working backward from the target. The game runs directly in the browser at hoodamath.com. No download required, no plugin, nothing to install. Just open it on any device with a modern browser and you're in. The game loads the current state from localStorage, so if you close the tab and come back later, your progress persists as long as you don't clear your cookies. I once spent forty minutes debugging what I thought was a save corruption issue, only to realize my kid had switched from Chrome to Safari on the iPad. Different browser, different localStorage, no saved games. Keep that in mind if progress mysteriously vanishes. The interface is straightforward: you see a set of source numbers at the top, a target number displayed prominently, and a workspace where you drag operations and values. Your goal is to construct an expression that evaluates to exactly the target. Each level introduces new operation tiles and sometimes limits the number of moves you can make.

How the Puzzle Mechanics Actually Work

Most players approach this by picking a source number and randomly combining operations until something sticks. That approach works for the first dozen levels or so. After that, you're just guessing and it becomes painfully slow. The real technique is reverse-engineering the target. Take a level where your target is 24 and your available numbers are 3, 8, 2, and 6. Instead of starting with 3 and wondering where it leads, start with 24 and ask what operations could produce it. 24 equals 8 times 3. You have both of those numbers available. Done. That was level three thinking, but the principle scales up. When the target is a prime number like 31, you immediately know addition or subtraction is probably involved rather than multiplication. If your numbers include 5, 7, 2, and 3, you work through: 5 times 7 is 35, minus 3 is 32, minus 2 doesn't work. But 5 times 7 minus 3 times 2 gets you to 29. That path is dead. Try 3 times 7 is 21, plus 5 is 26, plus 2 squared — wait, there's no exponent tile yet. Backtrack.

The Move Limit Problem

This is where most people stall out. Later levels impose move limits that make trial-and-error impossible. I remember one level specifically where the target was 100, the numbers were 4, 5, 10, 2, and 3, and the move limit was six operations. Every student I watched spend ten to fifteen minutes flailing with different combinations before someone finally noticed that 4 times 5 times 5 is 100, and you can make a second 5 by adding 3 and 2. That's three numbers combined into two operations, plus the initial multiplication, five total moves. Four if you structure it as 4 times 5 times (3 plus 2). Exactly six operations including the parentheses groupings the game counts. The trick is recognizing which numbers on your board are redundant. Often a level gives you more source numbers than you actually need, or it includes numbers that only make sense when combined early in the solution chain. If you find yourself using every single number, you're probably overcomplicating it.

Common Pitfalls

Order of operations catches people constantly. The game evaluates left to right unless you use the grouping tiles, which some levels introduce. If your target is 18 and you have 3, 4, and 2, writing 3 times 4 plus 2 gives you 14 under standard order of operations, but if the game groups left to right it gives you 20. Check how your specific version handles this. The Hooda Math implementation generally follows standard PEMDAS, but the visual layout of tiles can make it ambiguous whether you've created a grouped expression or a sequential one. Another thing nobody warns you about: fractional intermediate results. You might have a setup where dividing first then multiplying later is the intended path, even though the division produces a decimal mid-step. The game accepts it as long as the final result is a whole number matching the target. I wasted an entire session avoiding 7 divided by 2 because I thought intermediate fractions were invalid, when the level was literally designed around that exact step leading to a final answer of 14.

When the Game Fails You

There are legitimate edge cases where the game's answer checker is too rigid. I encountered a version where the intended solution involved combining two numbers into a three-digit intermediate value through concatenation-style logic, but the game wouldn't accept it because no explicit concatenation operator exists. In those rare cases, the workaround is to check whether multiple expressions evaluate to the target. Sometimes the game has a secondary acceptable solution path that isn't the one the level designer had in mind, and entering the alternative works just fine. If you're truly stuck, the numbers themselves often hint at the intended operation set. A target ending in 5 or 0 with numbers that don't obviously multiply into it usually signals addition and subtraction as the primary operators. Targets that are perfect squares or cubes typically want you to discover the root operation, even if the root tile isn't visibly available — sometimes you construct it from smaller operations.