196 explained.

196 in everyday use

One hundred ninety-six is fourteen squared and the most famous number in the reverse-and-add puzzle. Take a number, reverse its digits, add the two, and repeat: 56 becomes 121 in one step, and most numbers reach a palindrome within a few. 196 has never done so. Computers have run the process for billions of digits without finding a palindrome, yet nobody has proved one will never appear. Numbers with this suspected behaviour are called Lychrel numbers, and 196 is the smallest candidate.

Set that puzzle aside and 196 is a plain square, 2² × 7², with nine divisors: 1, 2, 4, 7, 14, 28, 49, 98, and 196. It is the sum of the first fourteen odd numbers, as every square is, and 196 balls arrange into a 14 by 14 square. Its digit sum is 16, also a square, and the number is 11000100 in binary. It is often quoted as a count of the world's countries, a figure reached by adding Vatican City, Palestine, and Taiwan to the 193 United Nations members.