![\"Tatham](\"https:\/\/www.thinkbio.guru\/tBioWordPress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Tatham.jpg\")
<\/a>To my mind, there are two phases to a lot of classical ‘logic puzzles’. Take Sudoku<\/a>\u00a0(spoiler alert! Problem solving strategies already developed & revealed \ud83d\ude41 ), for example. There is an initial phase where you figure out\u00a0how to win<\/em>; then you can play an infinite number of ‘success oriented’ games where you\u00a0implement<\/em>\u00a0 the strategies you developed initially, but rarely or never develop more. I think the initial phase holds the rich opportunities for giving folks an opportunity to develop their problem-solving skills in a meta-cognitive way. So, alongside Petals around the Rose<\/a>, Bongard Problems<\/a>, and PatternMaster<\/a>, I’m linking to Simon Tatham’s Puzzle Collection<\/a> because it hosts a variety of different problems. Not with the goal of allowing everyone an opportunity to play the one they like, but to\u00a0explore<\/em> and\u00a0learn the ‘tricks’<\/em>\u00a0of<\/em> \u00a0some that are unfamiliar.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In approaching a novel problem, the fertile ground for real thinking about problem solving strategies is available. I think this is ideally approached with pen-and-paper and a prayer that students are disciplined in observing their learning. I have had difficulty in assigning tasks like this because students are tightly focused on\u00a0what they did<\/em> rather than identifying conceptual problem solving strategies. For this reason, more structured requirements than “What did you learn from developing a solution” are likely needed. Questions such as “List the ‘a-ha’ moments you had where you made a quantum, permanent advance in your approach,” “What ‘tricks’ did you develop to identify the easiest ‘starting place’ for attacking your puzzle?” and “What analysis lead you to better approaches (i.e. what CAUSED your novel idea(s)?”<\/p>\n As an example to students, here is a link to a description of identifying the input<\/a>\u00a0an artificial intelligence would need for MineSweeper (the classic game numbers are revealed in a grid, identifying the number of adjacent mines\/bombs; it appears in the linked collection<\/a> as ‘Mines’).<\/p>\n Because of either familiarity (if one already knows a bunch of rote strategies, attempts to\u00a0develop<\/em> strategies are moot) or because the game doesn’t seem to send itself as well to the goals of this assignment, my colleague Emily Dykstra and I disallow the following list when giving\u00a0the assignment (this likely\u00a0doesn’t<\/em>\u00a0 include all the ‘undesirables’)<\/p>\n Black box (FYI, a game with some more variants is ThinkBio’s ‘Quantum Mine<\/a>‘; still not a great selection :-))
\nGuess
\nKeen
\nMines
\nPegs
\nSolo<\/p>\n