Brain Teasers
Puzzles to Print
Here are some classic puzzles to put on a table of puzzles and games at your Math Night. I print them out on
colorful 8 1/2 by 11 cardstock and supply the accessories to go with them. Most puzzle books have these and similar
puzzles in them.
No Consecutive Numbers
Print numbers 1 to 8 to go with this puzzle.
The Big Dipper
Supply three bamboo skewers to serve as lines.
No Two in a Row
Supply poker chips or pennies for this puzzle and the next two.
Invert the Triangle
You need to set up the puzzle with chips on the upper triangle--the longest row and every row above that.
Sliding Chips
Puzzles to Make
Marble Madness
15 marbles, 5 of each of 3 different colors, and triangular tray.
Make a triangular tray which is just large enough to hold 15 marbles.
Soma cube puzzles
You can buy a Soma cube or you can make your own. I glued together baby alphabet blocks to make the pieces. Here are the
configurations you need:
Instant insanity cubes
These were very popular in the 1970's and were available commercially. I wasn't able to find them in the stores
in the 2000's so I cut a set of cubes from wood and painted the faces. They come in a set of four. The object
is to arrange them in a row so that the same color does not appear twice in the row on any of the four sides.
The Tower of Hanoi
This is a classic puzzle. The puzzle pieces are three posts and 5 to 8 disks of different diameter, with a hole through
the center so they slide onto the posts. The rings start stacked on a single post, in order, with the largest at the bottom and
the smallest at the top. The object is to move the stack from one post to another so that when you are finished it is stacked on the other post
in the same way: in order, largest at the top, and smallest at the bottom. The rule is that you can move one ring at a time from the post it
is on to either of the other two posts, and you must always place a smaller ring on top of a larger ring and never the other way around. Square
pieces work as well as rings and are easier to make. You would need three dowels mounted vertically in a block and a set of 5 to 8 wood rings
of increasing size. Squares work just as well as rings and are much easier to make from wood. I found, too, that the stacking rings which are
popular baby toys work quite well as Tower of Hanoi pieces.
Source Material
There are a lot of good puzzle books available. Mental Math Workout by
Michael L. Lobosco has a complete description of how to make the three classic
puzzles above, Soma cube, Instant Insanity (there it is called "1980), and
the Tower of Hanoi.
Commercial puzzles:
Lunar Lockout
Railroad Rush Hour
Stormy Seas
Safari
Peg puzzles
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