Puzzles

Calling all puzzle lovers!

Can we learn while having fun at the same time? YES! In fact, scientists say that having fun while learning is a great idea. And puzzles can be a lot of fun... We'll share some that we love and look forward to seeing the ones you love in your comments!

Many puzzles can be done on paper, not just Sudoku. You can do these puzzles online (from brainbashers.com or others) or printed out (from krazydad.com or others). I prefer to print them out so I can take them with me everywhere and puzzle over them... for hours if need be!

One of my favorites is... solitaire Battleships. Here's one that I've started solving:

Battleship rules:

• Your goal: find all the ships!
• The numbers tell you how many ship pieces there are in that row or column  
• The ships are placed horizontally or vertically, with water between them so that they don't touch (not even diagonally)
• Circle ships are submarines; bullet or diamond shapes are pieces of bigger ships. 

On this example, the ships are shown on
the right side of the puzzle, so you can
cross them off as you locate them.











According to this site, the Battleship puzzle was invented by an Argentinian named Jaime Poniachik in the 1980's. Imagine inventing a puzzle!

Inventing your own puzzle?

You could start by creating your version of a puzzle that already exists... for example, creating your own battleship puzzle. Maybe start from the end: draw a grid with all the ships, water and numbers and then erase more and more until you only have a few clues left... Will your puzzle be easy or hard? Will it have only one possible solution? Are you sure it CAN be solved?

In your own puzzle, you may want to change the rules... What if there are more types of ship? What if they can touch diagonally? What if there's water, ships, and...icebergs?

Maybe your puzzle will have castles instead of ships, or lava instead of water.
The sky's the limit! (Or is it?)