Kakuro – Logic Puzzle Fun

If you’ve mastered Suduko, you might want to try the Japanese game Kakuro. The Kakuro game uses some of those same logic skills. Kakuro is different though in that it actually uses math, but it is still more a logic puzzle than a math exercise. It’s also called “cross sums” or “Kakro”. The Kakuro board looks much like a crossword puzzle. Some squares are blank, others are shaded, some have numbers instead of crossword clues that tell the player what the blank spaces add up to. The player fills in answers “across” and “down”. Only digits one through nine are … Continue reading →

Visual Brainstorms – Game Review

Visual Brainstorms: The Smart Thinking Game comes with 100 sturdy over-sized playing cards. The cards are color coded for easy, hard, and extra hard questions. Some of the cards have bonus questions. Harder questions are awarded more points. Some have “visual” bonus questions that you can only answer by having paid close attention to the card before you flipped it over for the answer. This game can be played several ways. I like that it’s so flexible for rules and time limits. You can play as teams, or with one or two players. If you play as teams you can … Continue reading →

PBS Games

I couldn’t let National Literacy Month pass without talking about the very fun PBS site for kids. PBS games are fun, colorful, easy to play, and educational. Many support reading skills. There are so many games for so many ages that I can’t list them all. Here though, are a few of my favorites. In Global Gizmo, under the Arthur Section, the player matches pairs of musical instruments from around the world. When you click on the pictures you hear what the instruments sound like. There is a link that explains where the instruments come from. Some are familiar like … Continue reading →

Quiddler: The Short Word Game – Game Review

Quiddler: The Short Word Game is a great game for families. The game takes about 20 minutes to play, quick to learn, is very portable, and is challenging for most ages. The official age suggestions are 8 to adult, but I’ve used a variation of the game for younger children. I even sometimes use the cards for teaching reading. The 118 cards are beautifully illustrated Celtic calligraphy designs inspired by books from 500 – 800 AD. The cards all have letters, or combinations of letters (CH,TH, IN, ER, QU), on them along with a number for scoring. On each round, … Continue reading →

Continuo – Game Review

I love games that don’t require reading a huge rule book or a lot of set up time. I also like games that can be played in less than twenty minutes. Continuo is one of those games. It’s incredible simple. You get 42 square cards. Each of those cards is divided into 16 small brightly colored squares. The idea is to place cards so that a color line is continued. You get points for the number of squares in each chain of color. If continue chain of both yellow and blue, you get points for both chains. The game is … Continue reading →

Mastermind – fun and logic

Mastermind is a great game for introducing or encouraging logical reasoning. One player picks four colored pegs and hides them on the end of the board. The other players uses educated guesses to figure out “the code” of colored pegs. There are six colors to pick from. One the code breaker guesses, the code maker places tiny black and white pegs off to the side. A black peg means you have a correct color in the correct position. A white peg means you have a correct color in your guess, but it’s not in the correct position. Officially it’s a … Continue reading →

Gemsweeper – Addictive Computer Game

My latest computer game addiction is Gemsweeper. The concept is simple, it is much like the Minesweeper game that comes with Windows. Instead of just looking for bombs though, you are looking for sparkling gemstones and avoiding cursed tiles. If you know a tile is “cursed” you click on it with a hammer. For gemstones, you select them with the hand tool. Once you solve the puzzle you see a picture. The program starts off very easy. The tutorial walks you through the steps of logic necessary for figuring out which tiles must be cursed and which must be gems. … Continue reading →

Bulls and Cows – a logic game

Kids love to crack codes, and its fun to use our brains. Here’s an easy to learn code cracking game that some schools are using to teach logical thought processes. I’ve even seen questions based on this game on middle school tests. The game is called Cows and Bulls. It’s similar to Mastermind, but you don’t have to buy anything to play it. You can play on a white board, or just a piece of paper. You need at least two people, but you play on teams or play cooperatively. One player thinks of a four digit number without zeros. … Continue reading →

UpWords – A Fun Game for Families

The UpWords game is a fun twist on Scrabble. Just like in Scrabble, players form crossed words horizontally and vertically on the board. The twist with UpWords is that the letter tiles stack, so you can build up on those words. For example, H – A – T could be changed to C – A – T, by placing a “C” tile over the “H” tile. The next player could play a “R” over the “T” so the word would become C – A – R, which could be changed to F – A – R, or the player could … Continue reading →

In a Pickle – Game Review

In a Pickle : The What’s in a Word Game is truly unique that encourages creative and logical thinking. The game is from GAMEWRIGHT and was a Dr. Toy Winner. It retails for around $8.00. Officially the game is for ages ten and up and for two to six players. I have used it with younger children though, and we also came up a solitaire version that I’ll explain a little later. The game takes about twenty to thirty minutes to play. It’s very easy to learn. Basically you try to win a set of words by building a row. … Continue reading →