Do your students' brains seem a little lazy lately? Energize them with some brainteasers -- problems and puzzles that will get those neurons sparking and get the blood flowing to the head. Included: Additional puzzle resources for kids of all ages!
New research indicates that exercising the brain stimulates its growth and
working efficiency. This week, Education World surveys some of the best
puzzle sources on the Internet. We introduce each site and tell a little
about it. Then we offer sample puzzles for you to share with your students.
If you're looking for puzzles for very young students, you'll find those in the Additional Puzzle Resources section at the end of this story.
What are you waiting for? Go ahead! One of these workouts ought to keep the brains in your class in tip-top shape. Then visit the best puzzling sites on the Internet to find even more brain-busting challenges for your students!
Brain Teasers
The Brain Teasers site, from Houghton Mifflin, provides new brainteasers
each week and posts solutions the following week. Choose a puzzle appropriate
for students in grades 3 and 4, 5 and 6, or 7 and up and select This Week's
Question, Last Week's Question, or the Archives. If you're stuck for an
answer, click the magnifying glass for a hint. If you're really
stuck, you can click the light bulb for the solution. The Mystery Number
puzzle below is from the Grades 5 and 6 Archive.
I am a four-digit number with no two digits the same. My ones digit
is twice my thousands digit and one less than my tens digit. My hundreds
digit is the difference between my tens digit and my thousands digit.
My thousands digit is an odd number less than 6. What number am I?
Brainbinders.com
Not all brain puzzles require reading. Try this origami puzzle, for example.
To solve the puzzle, print Puzzle
2002 from the Brainbinders.com site (reduced-size sample to the right),
cut it out, and make two folds so that you end with a solid color on each
side. You'll find almost 50 different puzzles at Brainbinders.com. This
one is one of the easiest. Others require two, three, four, or five folds
to solve. 
Mathematical
Problems
Take your students' brains on a "power walk" to this site. There you'll
find Math brainteasers like the one below.
A banana plantation is located next to a desert. The plantation owner
has 3000 bananas that he wants to transport to the market by camel, across
a 1000 kilometre stretch of desert. The owner has only one camel, which
carries a maximum of 1000 bananas at any moment in time, and eats one
banana every kilometre it travels. What is the largest number of bananas
that can be delivered at the market?
Brain
Teasers from Pick Your Brain!
Are your students ready for a real workout? Then have them try the puzzle
below. You'll find it and 11 other brainteasers at Brain Teasers from
Pick Your Brain, a student project at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
A woman is reading a book. Each day, she reads half of the remaining
book. The book has 348 pages. How many days will it take her to finish
the book?
Serendip Brain
and Behavior
The Prisoners' Dilemma puzzle (below) is just one of the interactive activities
at Serendip Brain and Behavior. Your students might also try Pattern Detection
and Serendipity, Blindsight: Seeing What You Don't See, Seeing More than
Your Eye Does, and others. Many of the puzzles at this site require the
Java plug-in.
A fiendish cyberspace wizard has locked you and Serendip into a diabolical
game. On each turn of the game, you each must choose, without knowing
the other's choice, between cooperating with each other and trying to
take advantage of each other. Following every turn of the game, you will
each receive a certain number of gold coins, depending on the choices
you made. If you both decide to cooperate, you will each receive three
gold coins. If one of you decides to cooperate but the other chooses competition,
the competitor will receive five gold coins and the cooperator none. If
you both decide to compete, each will receive a single gold coin. Your
chances of surviving are closely related to the average number of coins
you have. If the average drops below a critical number (chosen in an unknown
way by the wizard), a foul fate will befall you. Since neither of you
knows the critical number, neither of you has any choice but to try, on
each and every turn, to maximize your own income. Can you find a successful
strategy?
The rec.puzzles archive
The rec.puzzles archive offers many classic mind-benders, categorized
by subject area. Among the two dozen subject areas you'll find are analogies,
cryptograms, language puzzles, logic puzzles, problems of probability,
riddles, and trivia puzzles. Three sample puzzles appear below.
Bear (a geometry puzzle): If a hunter goes out his front door,
goes 50 miles south, then goes 50 miles west, shoots a bear, goes 50 miles
north and ends up in front of his house, what color was the bear?
Logic Puzzle 29: Three people check into a hotel. They pay
the manager $30 and go to their room. The manager finds out that the room
rate is $25 and gives $5 to the bellboy to return to the guests. On the
way to the room, the bellboy decides that $5 would be difficult to share
among three people so he pockets $2 and gives $1 to each person. Now each
person has paid $10 and gotten $1 back. So each guest paid $9, for a total
of $27, and the bellboy has $2 -- for a total of $29. Where is the other
dollar?
Riddle 8: I know a word of letters three. Add two and fewer
there will be.
Dr. Matrix'
Web World of Science
Some puzzles are classics, such as The Fork in the Road. Others, such
as The Counterfeit Coins, offer new twists on old classics. Which ones
can you solve?
A vacationer finds himself on an island inhabited by two tribes. Members
of one tribe always tell the truth. Members of the other tribe always
lie. The vacationer comes to a fork in a road and asks a native which
branch he should take to reach a village. He doesn't know whether the
native is a truth-teller or a liar. The vacationer thinks a moment, then
asks one question. From the reply he knows which road to take. What question
does he ask?
You have ten stacks of coins, each consisting of ten half-dollars.
One of those stacks is counterfeit, but you don't know which. You do know
the weight of a genuine half-dollar and you know that each counterfeit
coin weighs 1 gram more than it should. You may weigh the coins. What
is the fewest number of weighings you'll need to determine which stack
is counterfeit?
Thinks.com
While you're trying to figure out the answer to the last puzzle, don't
miss the puzzles at Thinks.com. Click Go Puzzles and you'll find a number
of different kinds of puzzles, including Puzzles by Sam Lloyd and Doublets.
Can you solve them?
The Milkman's Puzzle: Honest John says, "What I don't know
about milk is scarcely worth mentioning," but he is flabbergasted one
day when each of two ladies asks him for 2 quarts of milk. One lady has
a 5-quart pail and the other has a 4-quart pail. John has only two 10-gallon
cans, each full of milk. How does he measure out exactly 2 quarts of milk
for each lady?
Doublets: Change only one letter at a time to turn MILK into
PAIL and MICE into RATS.
The following sites include multiple -- and worthwhile -- puzzles, but most are too visual to show here. You'll just have to visit them!
Brain Games
From Neuroscience for Kids, these puzzles include Brain Hieroglyphics, On-Line Response Time experiments, a crossword puzzle, a memory game, and more. Can you recognize the upside down faces?
Memory
Click any of the titles next to Online Exhibits for a variety of memory games from the Exploratorium Online. Here you can try to name the head under Elvis's hair, identify the Droodles, or remember what you see.
Mega Mathematics
This long-time favorite is terrific for students in grades 4 and above. Visitors can stay at Hotel Infinity, stage a play at Unusual School, or unravel knotty dilemmas at Untangling the Mathematics of Knots. The problems here take longer to set up, but they're worth it. Each one includes a comprehensive teaching plan -- but your students won't notice.
Imagiware Games
This site provides several brain-busting games, including Master Web, a game of logic in which the object is to decipher the code represented by a series of colored balls.
Mathpuzzle.com
The Puzzle of the Week here is definitely not for beginners. The list of links is as comprehensive as you'll find anywhere, but most of the puzzles are for older students and adults.
Don't stop yet! The Web offers plenty of exercises to help your students keep their brains in shape. Check them out whenever you or your students need a boost.
Brother Bear's Brain Teasers
Includes two brainteasers for young children.
Build-a-Monster
Young children match heads, torsos, and feet to create a dinosaur.
Elementary School Math Problems, Puzzles, Tips & Tricks
Middle School Math Problems, Puzzles, Tips & Tricks and High School Math Problems, Puzzles, Tips & Tricks from the Math Forum contain links to lots of puzzle sites. The sites include manipulative, visual, and word puzzles.
Funbrain.com
Puzzles and games for students from 6 to 15, at several levels of difficulty. These puzzles are subject-based but fun.
Sound Puzzles Word Finder
A new puzzle every day for students in middle school and above. Each puzzle consists of three parts requiring a variety of language skills. Solvers have to visit every day, however, since this site doesn't have an archive.
Amazing Brain Facts: Index
Includes lots of information about the brain, written for kids in small word bites!
Jay's Brain
This Discovery Channel site features experiments to find out how the brain works as well as other brain-related articles and activities.
Neuroscience for Kids
A great resource on the nervous system, this site includes an explanation of the development, structure, and function of the brain, written in language that kids can understand.
NeuroLab Online
Classrooms around the world join NASA personnel as they prepare for the NeuroLab mission, which will conduct brain research to study neurological and behavioral changes in space.
Article by Linda Starr
Education World®
Copyright © 2005 Education World Originally published 05/17/1999
Links last updated 07/05/2005
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