MT12 Numerical and logical puzzles and games
Specific Curriculum Outcome
LR01 Analyze puzzles and games that involve numerical and logical reasoning, using problem-solving strategies.
LR01 Analyze puzzles and games that involve numerical and logical reasoning, using problem-solving strategies.
activities
- Skyscrapers Desmos Activity - A Desmos activity version of the Skyscrapers puzzle. For more online Skyscraper puzzles, visit Brainbashers.
- Pennies and Paperclip - Pennies and Paperclips is a two-player game played on a 4 by 4 checkerboard with a standard color pattern. One player, "Penny", gets two pennies as her pieces. The other player, "Clip", gets a pile of paperclips as his pieces. Penny places her two pennies on any two different squares on the board. Once the pennies are placed, Clip attempts to cover the remainder of the board with paperclips — with each paperclip being required to cover two adjacent squares. Paperclips are not allowed to overlap. If the remainder of the board can be covered with paperclips then Clip is declared the winner. If the remainder of the board cannot be covered with paperclips then Penny is the winner.
- Desert Trek from 100 Day Challenge - Sara needs to trek from an oasis to a destination 10 miles away across a barren desert. The facts: Crossing one mile of desert requires using 1 gallon of water. Sara can only carry 6 gallons of water at a time from the water-abundant oasis where she begins. Sara can drop a water cache (of any amount of water from the supply she is carrying at that moment) at any of the nine stops along the route, and then pick up any part of the cache on a later trip. What's the minimum number of times Sara must leave the oasis in order to cross the entire 10 mile span of desert?
- Thirty-One - Lay out the ace to six of each suit in a row, face up and not overlapping, one suit above another. You will have one column of four aces, a column of four twos, and so on—six columns in all. The first player flips a card upside down and says its number value. Players alternate, each time turning down one card, mentally adding its value to the running total, and saying the new sum out loud. The player who exactly reaches thirty-one, or who forces the next player to go over that sum, wins the game.
- How Do You Play Chopsticks? - Have students watch this video an try to figure out the rules for chopsticks. Can they figure out a strategy to win?
- Six the Hard Way - The puzzle is this: Form an expression with three 1’s, three 2’s, three 3’s, and so on, up to three 9’s, so that the value of each expression is equal to 6. As an example, an expression using three 7’s is 7 – 7 ÷ 7 = 6. Can you find expressions using the other numbers? Some solutions are at Cut-the-knot
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- Mastermind - There are a lot of online versions of the game Mastermind online.
- Cribbage - Crib is a game that combines numerical and logical reasoning in a fun and engaging way. Combinations are also used in the counting of points. In my experience, the main hurdle is getting students to learn the rules as they can be daunting to new players. I would start by demonstrating a game using an online version and having students note the rules as they observe them.
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- Sudoku Printables by Krazydad - Here are thousands of free Sudoku puzzles to print. Each booklet of printable Sudoku contains eight puzzles, instructions, hints and answers.
- Bridges (Hashiwokakero) Puzzles by KrazyDad - Here are hundreds of free Bridges puzzles suitable for printing. In these puzzles, you connect the islands to form a network so that you can reach any island from any other island. The number on each island indicates the number of outgoing bridges. You may only connect islands horizontally or vertically, and you may use one or two bridges to connect islands, but no more than two. Each Bridge puzzle has only one unique solution, which you can find without guessing.
- Logic Puzzles at Logic-Puzzles.org - A large collection of logic puzzles for play, both online and the old fashioned way with pencil and paper. The kind of puzzles here are most commonly referred to as "logic grid" puzzles. In each puzzle you are given a series of categories, and an equal number of options within each category. Each option is used once and only once. Your goal is to figure out which options are linked together based on a series of given clues. Each puzzle has only one unique solution, and each can be solved using simple logical processes (i.e. educated guesses are not required).