Puzzlepages

Below are the common Charms (types of products) you’ll find in this Faction. Visit their pages for details about what they are and what is inside once purchased.

• Educational Puzzle
• Logic Puzzle
• Puzzle Pack

Humans love puzzles, because humans love problem solving. A puzzle is basically the most efficient, self-contained little nugget of problem solving. They’re a great way to keep your mind sharp in general, but also to practice very specific skills such as counting or vocabulary.

That’s only true, however, if you actually (creatively) problem solve.

Simply repeating the same instructions over and over is not puzzling. That’s homework, that’s rote learning. Those are “exercises” that will be in our Teachers faction, not Puzzlepages.

No, the best puzzles are about spotting different patterns each time. Each time you play that puzzle, you discover a new little “pattern” to help you solve next ones even faster. And sometimes the puzzle is so challenging that it forces you to completely rewire how you think before you see the “obvious” solution.

You continue doing this, until you’ve seen all that this puzzle has to offer and move to a different puzzle. No sense repeating what you can already do!

Puzzles are great for teaching you the specific skills required for that puzzle. Nothing less, nothing more. As such, doing the same puzzle over and over can be a fine way to pass the time, but does not make much sense educationally.

If you, instead, play a different puzzle each day … then you’ll grow and learn quite quickly.

The section above explains why puzzles are great and how you can apply them to learn and grow.

Well, that’s the kind of wisdom we keep in mind when designing these puzzles!

They are not exercises or rote problems. They are creative logical thinking and problem solving puzzles. The rules should be so simple that nobody is confused or overwhelmed. But applying those rules to the puzzles should lead to all sorts of twists and turns and sudden realizations.

When our puzzles focus on a clear topic (e.g. “shapes”), we keep it varied using different levels. Level 1 is easy and has 10 puzzles, then you go to Level 2 with a new rule, and so forth. This also helps build an understanding of the skill in small steps, instead of throwing it at the puzzler all at once.

We also aim to make the puzzles look just a little more colorful and thematic, compared to your typical black-and-white Sudoku. We do this to make them extra attractive to children and extra engaging. And because we find this kind of design and theme to be sorely lacking in the puzzle space ;)

As usual, ownership and customization were high on our agenda when making these.

• You can edit the original puzzle PDFs yourself. (With a PDF editor or image editor.)
• Or you can skip puzzles, leave them out, modify them to suit a student’s challenges better. It depends on the puzzle whether this is easier after printing or when playing digitally.
• Many puzzles also come with a “generator”. A little program to open in your browser that generates new puzzles. You can use that to pick the settings you want and let it generate some tailored puzzles for you.

However you like! Share them with an entire class. Prepare one as a surprise gift. Customize it for your kid.

You don’t need a special license or permission for anything. You bought the experience—it’s yours to experience it as you wish.