Fun Math Puzzles – 1

We can try to work backwards from 2021. We can start with subtracting 1 to get 2020. Dividing by 2 twice gives 505. We must subtract 1 to get 504. Since 504 is divisible by 8, we can divide 3 times to get 63. Subtracting 1 gives 62. The rest is quite trivial: $$62\rightarrow 31 \rightarrow 30 \rightarrow 15 \rightarrow 14 \rightarrow 7 \rightarrow 6 \rightarrow 3 \rightarrow 2 \rightarrow 1$$ Counting the steps, we have $\boxed{17}$ as our answer.