Puzzles can be a useful way to engage in mathematics in a non-routine way. They offer many advantages and some potential challenges such as:
- Puzzles can provide a different way of looking at mathematics.
- Some card tricks and games have underlying mathematics worthy of further investigation.
- Puzzles can be set in a realistic context and can be engaging for those who would otherwise lack patience working through textbook problems.
- They provide a way in to develop investigative approaches to learning mathematics and a stimulation to investigate mathematics topics that arise during puzzle solving.
- Puzzles can often be solved in different ways and so they offer an opportunity for groups to discuss their different ways of solving them.
And now for some of the potential challenges:
- If the focus of a session is the development of a particular skill, then puzzles with their different methods of solution may not provide the desired focus.
- In any group there are likely to be both those who like puzzles and those who are not particularly interested in them.
- Puzzles while engaging can also be more stressful than straightforward problems.
- Computing provides a powerful tool to solve some puzzles, but there is a danger of a focus on the computing rather than on the underlying mathematics.