Oh, and some other good problems for kids are the various bridge-crossing problems (involving priests/cannibals, animals that want to eat each other, etc. etc.) Tom Tom Karzes writes:
I remember a number of little brain teaser puzzles that I enjoyed as a kid. Here are a few that come to mind, all very old:
o You have a 3x3 grid of dots. Draw 4 straight line segments that connect them all without lifting your pencil.
o Various triangle-counting puzzles. These are a good exercise for kids to help them learn how to be thorough and not to miss solutions that might not be immediately obvious.
o Plant 10 trees in 5 rows of 4 each.
o The Königsberg bridge problem. This is readily understandable by kids. There are other simlar problems, e.g. draw a square with diagonals connecting opposite corners (not possible), or the same problem with a triangular "roof" added (possible).
o There's a classic puzzle where you have three utility companies and three houses, and the problem is to connect all three utilities to all three houses without crossing any lines. I don't think there's a solution to this one, unless you allow one of the lines to pass under a house.
o Tangrams are good for kids, although of course they're a physical puzzle.
o When I was a little kid, the Soma Cube was a fad, and trying to build the different shapes from the booklet was a lot of fun (but again, this is a physical puzzle).
Those are just a few that come to mind.
Tom
Dan Asimov writes:
I tried Amazon.com <http://amazon.com/>, searching on
math puzzles ages x-y
for various values of x and y. You get a bunch of plausible candidates.
I also loved Martin Gardner collections, which are generally written so as to be understandable to bright 8-year-olds, though the puzzles might be hard for kids that young. Such as the first book, now with an absurdly long title:
http://www.amazon.com/Hexaflexagons-Probability-Paradoxes-Tower-Hanoi/dp/052... <http://www.amazon.com/Hexaflexagons-Probability-Paradoxes-Tower-Hanoi/dp/0521735254/ref=la_B000AP8X8G_1_9/177-3981617-6736423?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1456256933&sr=1-9>
or for more of his: http://www.amazon.com/Martin-Gardner/e/B000AP8X8G <http://www.amazon.com/Martin-Gardner/e/B000AP8X8G>
—Dan
On Feb 23, 2016, at 7:43 AM, Fred Kochman <kochman@idaccr.org> wrote:
One of my daughters writes,
One of my co-workers recently bought Smullyan's Lady or the Tiger book for his daughters, but he said that it seems to be too difficult so far. (To be fair, his oldest daughter is only 8 years old.) His kids seem to love mind-bending puzzles though - do you know of any logic books that would be better for really young kids?
Any suggestions? Probably "logic" could be broadly interpreted.
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