Introducing Arithmancy Pants: a ‘numerology’ app for macOS and iOS

Arithmancy Pants on iOS, showing that 'What do you get if you multiply six by nine?' can be converted to 30706 different numbers in up to 9 steps, with a chart showing how many steps it takes to reach each number. The nuber 42 is selected, which can be reached by converting letters to their positions in the alphabet to get 23, 8, 1, 20, 4, 15, 25, 15, 21, 7, 5, 20, 9, 6, 25, 15, 21, 13, 21, 12, 20, 9, 16, 12, 25, 19, 9, 24, 2, 25, 14, 9, 14, 5, then by adding up the digits until they sum to a single digit (a.k.a. digital root) to get 5, 8, 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 6, 3, 7, 5, 2, 9, 6, 7, 6, 3, 4, 3, 3, 2, 9, 7, 3, 7, 1, 9, 6, 2, 7, 5, 9, 5, 5, then by adding up groups of up to 2 numbers to get 13, 3, 10, 13, 10, 7, 15, 13, 7, 6, 11, 10, 8, 15, 9, 14, 10, then by converting each number to Roman numerals to get XIII III X XIII X VII XV XIII VII VI XI X VIII XV IX XIV X, then by taking the number of letters in each word to get 4, 3, 1, 4, 1, 3, 2, 4, 3, 2, 2, 1, 4, 2, 2, 3, 1, then by adding up all the numbers to get 42

People go to all sorts of lengths to extract their preferred ‘magic’ numbers from text in order to prove that there’s something special about that text. But you can get almost any number out of any text if you try hard enough. Arithmancy Pants is a free app for macOS and iOS that will try many different techniques in sequence to tell you all the numbers that can be derived from the text you enter. You could think of it as a numerological version of Douglas Adams’ Electric Monk, saving you the trouble of believing in numerology (previously known as arithmancy).

You can choose which techniques you want to use, and how many steps you want to go to. Arithmancy Pants shows you not only the single numbers that can be derived from the whole phrase, but also the intermediate numbers encountered along the way. There are charts so you can see at a glance just how many lucky numbers each phrase can be converted to.

You could use Arithmancy Pants to debunk the claims of numerologists, or to make your own claims for fun — but please don’t use it to take advantage of gullible people. Arithmancy Pants is a silly app with a silly name, made by a two-time Fancy Pants Parade winner. You can get it from the Mac or iOS App Store today.

Arithmancy Pants on macOS, showing the 'Explore Results' tab, where the result at each step of calculation can be expanded to show the results at the next step.

Leave a comment