Author: dhabecker

Puzzles in the age of Distance Learning

So…this came across my inbox today. You really, really need to explore these puzzles. Nearly all of the puzzles were originally intended for face-to-face environments, in which students would work shoulder-to-shoulder on a wonderful paper-based puzzle. Now, of course, that is not currently possible in many schools across the nation. So, here is a collection […]

101 and Out

Player A rolls a die. They decide whether it will be worth ones or tens and records the number. Player B does the same and records the number. On roll 2, the player still decides whether it is worth ones or tens and adds it to roll 1. Play continues until all rolls are complete […]

Tower NIM

Similar to the basic version of NIM, two players alternate turns picking up tiles.  The objective is still to force the opposing player to pick up the last tile. What is different is the arrangement of the tiles at the beginning of the game.  Tiles are arranged into the shape of a tower, like so… […]

Sprouts

Sprouts is a paper-and-pencil game that can be enjoyed simply by both adults and children. Yet it also can be analyzed for its significant mathematical properties. It was invented by mathematicians John Horton Conway and Michael S. Paterson at Cambridge University in the early 1960s. Setup is even simpler than the popular Dots and Boxes […]