How Many 3’s Do You See? (And How Many 4’s!)

A graphic shows a smartphone screen and asks us to determine how many 3’s can be seen. A similar graphic shows a smartphone screen and asks us to count how many times we see the number 4.

How Many 3’s?

First we’ll take a look at the “How Many 3’s” graphic, which has tens of thousands of shares on Facebook as of February 2016.

The comments for the graphic seem to yield a variety of answers from 13-21. The solution I came up with is 19, with the solution offered in the graphic below.

You’ll note that whoever created this graphic sneakily put a “3” in place of the small “I” and in place of the number 8 on the dial pad. I’ve seen some readers claim that the battery’s three dots could be considered a “3” along with the 3 bars on the Sprint signal (because the question doesn’t specifically state to find the number 3, just “3’s”). If you count those, you could make a case for 21 being the answer.

How Many 4’s?

A similar graphic has also circulated with nearly as many shares as the “count the 3’s” graphic above. This one asks us to count the number 4.

I found a solution of 25, as shown in the graphic below. It appears that some people miss the faint 4G at the top of the graphic, so you’ll see a number of readers giving an answer of 24.

Again, if you count signal strength, you could come up with a solution that’s a couple of numbers higher than this.

As with many of these puzzles, such as the “How many watermelon” graphic, it comes down to interpretation.

What answers do you have for the puzzles above?