Learning from Puzzles and Games

There are a great variety of puzzles and games out there. This provides a wealth of opportunity for people of all ages (but particularly kids) to experience unexpected and novel problems. Furthermore, since the problems are in actuality only play, there is no reason to try to skip the problem solving process (ie. there is no negative consequence or inefficiency to experimentation, failure, etc.). This gives a person the opportunity to freely practice exploring new strategies to solve new problems. Solving problems you have never seen before is a skill worth practicing! It is even more powerful when you choose greatly varied problems. Not only do you develop a breadth of new skills, but you make your problem solving skills as general as possible. You thus avoid accidentally pigeonholing yourself. There are plenty of other ways to exercise your brain (learning an instrument or a language for instance), but this article will focus on puzzles and games.

Preamble

These are only some of the kinds of puzzles and games out there. Feel free to search for yourself or check out more extensive lists of puzzles and games. To maximize the learner's benefit a Discovery/Inquiry Based Learning approach is recommended.

It is strongly recommended that you investigate games and puzzles before presenting them to kids. Please ensure age appropriateness in terms of both content and student ability. YouTube has plenty of videos discussing strategies and exemplifying game play, this can be used as a starting off point. It is important for guardians to make informed decisions about what media their charges are consuming.

Puzzles

Jigsaw Puzzles

One of the first puzzles many kids are introduced to is of the form, put the round peg through the round hole and the square peg through the square hole (a spatial reasoning puzzle). An obvious continuation of this line of thought is to put jigsaw puzzle pieces together. Strategies, beyond fitting pieces together randomly, will naturally evolve as the number of pieces increases (children should start with puzzles containing only a few pieces). The first refinements will usually be attempts to complete the image and/or match the shapes of the pieces (which likely will occur faster if they have solved the square peg/round hole riddle already). Later, search and sort methods will be used to subdivide the puzzle into smaller, easier puzzles that can be put together after (ie. separate pieces by color, edge vs not edge piece, the assumed object in the image the piece is part of, etc.). This reduces the problem from a large intractable problem to smaller easier problems.

Once the child has mastered the sorting and searching (ie. they sort edge pieces by color/object too), there isn't a lot more cognitive benefit to be had. They can continue doing jigsaws for pleasure, but they won't be learning much. Sorting skills can be practiced in a variety of more practical ways (helping put away clean laundry or dishes for instance) or even by moving to other kinds of puzzles like helping build IKEA furniture or Lego. There are, of course, many other mechanical puzzles too

Mechanical Puzzles

Besides jigsaw puzzles, there are many kinds of mechanical puzzles. Tangram puzzles and other tiling puzzles (like Conway's puzzle or domino tiling) are great for geometric intuition. Disentanglement puzzles are nice too! The difficulty of these puzzles can ramp quickly. Be careful not to overwhelm a child with puzzles meant for adults.

Puzzle boxes can be quite pricey, but are very satisfying.

Math Puzzles

Water pouring puzzles are a classic and have the extra benefit of arithmetic practice. The missing square puzzle and chessboard paradox both have an excellent twist.

Word Puzzles

Scrabble, Boggle, Wordle, anagrams, ciphers, and crosswords are all word puzzles, which help maintain your vocabulary while exercising your problem solving skills. Some of them (crosswords particularly) can even help expand your vocabulary. Riddles ask a person to think creatively about double meaning and the sound of words and phrases. It is precious to play riddles in the dark, with a friend, by a pool. It always brings a Sméagol to my face.

Other

"Continue the pattern" puzzles (often number patterns) are an excellent way to exercise inductive reasoning. An interesting variation on this puzzle is a particular IQ test called Raven's Progressive Matrices.

There are lots of other puzzles like the Tower of Hanoi, the eight_queens_puzzle, logic puzzles, Sudokus, and mazes. Feel free to search out your own favorites!

Games

Games come in a kaleidoscope of variation. Sports, board games, card games, and video games are just the beginning. All require the players to learn the rules/objectives of the game. Most of the time players will also learn to develop strategies to increase their chances of winning. Games often involve more than one player (AI or human). In this case the players must think about the other player's point of view when devising strategies and adapt to each other in real time. The dynamics of multiplayer games change greatly based on whether the game is designed to be cooperative, competitive, or somewhere in between (like team sports).

Specific games also have individual strengths. One example is Monopoly. It allows for practice with math topics like money, basic arithmetic, mortgages, interest, and percentages for instance. Card games often require counting and pattern recognition. Strategies are often informed by probability and those probabilities can be better calculated by remembering which cards are "still in play" (and also remembering how other players have behaved in past hands). Catan requires a great deal of bartering and misdirection/stealth in approaching the win condition (so opponents don't team up to prevent the win).

Games can be used as a reward, to encourage good behavior and even as a gateway to get reluctant learners to develop skills they might otherwise neglect.

Memory Games

Memory is important to human intelligence and learning. The short version is you must remember what you learned for it to be useful and intelligence is heavily influenced by the amount of working memory a person has (the number of things they can hold in their head at one time) and how efficiently they use that working memory (how much useful information each thing being held contains). For a more detailed explanation of my interpretation of these topics, check out A Brief Discussion of Human Intelligence and Learning.

All games have the potential for practicing long-term memory (remembering rules from last time, etc.) and short-term/working memory (remembering past moves, current positions, new rules, etc.). Some games are built around memory though. Games like Simon and Concentration test short-term/working memory directly. Multiplayer games, like Telephone and collaborative storytelling (one word/sentence at a time or otherwise) use short-term/working memory too.

Collaborative storytelling can also use long-term memory, especially if the story continues being developed for months or years (as often happens in tabletop role-playing games). Trivia games/quizzes are also excellent for testing long-term memory.

Video Games

Video games come in all shapes and sizes. Some recreate physical games and puzzles. Sometimes this results in a better experience (instantly shuffled cards for instance), sometimes it is worse (basic math skills in Monopoly being swept under the rug by the computer), and sometimes it doesn't change much. It is almost always the case that the game will be cheaper to buy (enabling the same amount of money to supply a more varied experience). Some games are impossible or impractical to implement anywhere outside a digital play-space.

The most obviously useful genre of video game is the edutainment game. Titles like Math Blaster and Reader Rabbit have been around for decades. There are also many online games that use maps, text, or other media to drill students on facts from a variety of topics. Lightbot is an example of a coding game, which is used to introduce kids to concepts from computer programming.

Please be aware, suggestions up to this point in the article are very easy to keep free of graphic content. Some of the suggestions below are aimed at older kids, teens, and even adults. Please choose the media you expose your wards to carefully. Nobody wants learning to scare the learner.

Minecraft is used in many schools. It has many of the same benefits as Lego, especially when paired with blueprints. There is a crafting system which requires recipes and following procedures. For older kids there is an opportunity to explore engineering topics like electric circuits and design of automated resource extraction systems.

Simulation games are another genre which can pay dividends. A good example is SimCity. SimCity presents the player with balance sheets and negative numbers (in the form of debt and deficits). It also presents the concept of spending money to make money (a taste of exponential growth). SimCity also shows some basics about how municipal infrastructure and services work and why they are maintained. It can be a useful starting point for a discussion of civics and governance.

The final genre I will mention in this section is strategy games. Strategy video games are often similar to board games like chess or Risk. They entail completing specific goals by out-planning the other players. There are usually some kind of tactical or economic components involved. An example of this type of game is Civilization. The goal of this game is to reach one of the victory conditions before the other players. The balance of power is apparent in this game, as a player who gets obviously too far ahead can expect their opponents to gang up on them. It also has many historical references (famous people, places, technologies, buildings, etc.) which might ignite an interest in history. It should be noted that the fantasy aspects of the game must be appreciated. It is possible to have Ancient Babylon survive and put the first person on the moon, which is completely historically inaccurate.

Adventure Puzzle Games

One last video game genre merits its own section. Adventure puzzle games, and to some extent adventure games and puzzle games more broadly, fit this category. These games generally revolve around solving a mystery, saving the kingdom, subduing the evildoer, rescuing the important person, and/or finding the treasure by completing a variety of tasks. The tasks often skew heavily toward puzzles. There are usually labyrinths to navigate, strange machines that must be understood then used/fixed to achieve milestones, and number/writing systems that must be deciphered. Puzzles like the ones mentioned earlier in this article are often included too! These puzzles are made even better when the game doesn't tell you what kind of puzzles they are. You must tinker with them and deduce for yourself what is going on. The player is usually asked to spot patterns in a variety of forms like symbols, sounds, colors, etc.

There are ways you can make the game play more valuable too! You can take notes, but try to remember things without looking at the notes. It will help you practice remembering. This can be applied in your daily life too! Another way to improve the experience is to play with a group (in person or remotely). Assign one person as the "driver" (the person running the controls) and everyone else can make suggestions. It makes for an excellent cooperative game with the benefit that more experienced problem solvers can model techniques for the less experienced. Furthermore, if your game is light on naming locations, or you choose to ignore the naming conventions, you can make communicating which puzzle to work on into a miniature game as well. In this scenario, players must invent names for the locations on the fly. The best names tend to be short, memorable, unique descriptions of the area which anyone could easily understand, if they are familiar with the locale. The gaming group is forced to distill descriptions down to their most integral parts and collectively create their own vocabulary for the specific game. It is somewhat reminiscent of the reasoning-gap activity in task-based language learning.

The pinnacle of the genre is (in my opinion) the Myst series, particularly the second installment Riven. Myst inspired an entire sub-genre of imitator "Myst-likes", many of which you will find listed below. Of particular note is Obduction. It was made by the same developer and has 2 overarching puzzles which are really quite good. Myst also inspired another sub-genre of video games called Escape the room games. These were generally online Flash games. Escape the room games further inspired Escape rooms, a form of interactive theater.

The adventure puzzle game of most interest to educators is probably The Witness. It is built around the ideas of Discovery/Inquiry Based Learning. There is no explanation, just feedback to indicate correct or incorrect solutions. The puzzles start out incredibly simple and progress very gradually to exceptionally hard. The player must discern for themselves, what the underlying rules are as they progress. It is sometimes possible to jump directly to the hard puzzles without completing the easy ones. This gives the player the opportunity to test their deductive skills as they have not seen how the intricacies of the puzzle are teased apart in the easy puzzles. It is important to note that the game creator considers himself an artist and has shoehorned in a series of video and audio clips to try to make one or more vague philosophical points. The audio clips can be disabled in the settings. The video cannot be. At least one of the videos is off putting (in my opinion). I recommend you investigate this yourself before giving it to kids unsupervised.

Many of the games listed below are several decades old. A benefit of buying old games like these is that they are cheap (especially when on sale for 80% or 90% off). The low price means more variety of games/puzzles. There are drawbacks though. Social mores have changed significantly over the decades. Some statements, behaviors, portrayals, etc. from the game may not be socially acceptable anymore. This happens in all media. If you are worried about this, you can either choose to avoid the games in question or take the opportunity to discuss the social changes that have happened with the child. Furthermore some of the games are so old that they predate effective age and content ratings. The ratings they have received may not match with your expectations. Please be careful.

Introducing Adventure Puzzle Games to Students

Many kids will dive in, when presented with a game. Others may need more structure to ease into a good first experience. For young children it is suggested to start with games designed for their age level. Humongous Entertainment has the Freddi Fish and Putt-Putt series which fit the bill.

Some older kids and teens might need coaxing, in which case you could present them with a more familiar game genre that has puzzle elements. For older kids you might try The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild with the understanding they must complete all the "puzzle rooms." Teens on the other hand might respond better to a puzzle platformer type game like Portal or Braid.