Create Calculation Puzzle

Creating puzzles with numbers is normally not as straightforward as it is with text, but the calculation puzzle solves this problem.

Setting up puzzles around mathematical operations is super easy with the calculation puzzle maker, and even better, it has a hidden solution as the basis.

It will generate one calculation exercise per character of your hidden solution, which the player then needs to connect to an outcome by dragging and dropping.

Since students of all ages can use the calculation puzzle tool, having enough options to determine the difficulty is very useful.

The first way to account for this, is by choosing the highest number used for the outcome of a calculation. This will heavily impact the types of calculations that you will get since the lower the number gets, the less freedom the algorithm has.

Note: picking '< 20' here, limits the hidden solution to 20 characters since each outcome needs to be unique (otherwise the puzzle would not work).

Since the difficulty is also determined by the type of operations, you can handpick which ones you want to use in your calculations.

An interesting way to crank up the difficulty, is by increasing the 'Maximum number of operations' setting.

This way, multiple numbers and operations are combined and this will challenge the player to insert more advanced calculating skills.

Note that the algorithm keeps the precedence of the operations in mind, so multiplication and division will never come after addition and subtraction, this was done to keep it clear for the player.

While working on the calculation exercises, players receive feedback by default, if an outcome that they dragged and dropped, it is in the correct spot.

If you want to make it harder for the players, disable this feature so that you only see the 'correct' feedback once you've found all of the correct answers.

Try out a sample activity to get a feel for how an activity of this type works, how it looks.

This sample activity is very basic and only illustrates the most core features, but it will help you get a better understanding of what the activity type can do for you.