Thursday, 29 December 2011

Shikaku - a great game to investigate areas of rectangles. Online flash or iOS app! Is this the new sudoku?

 

I recently read this post over at Mathing... about Shikaku. Being the Christmas holiday break, i like to have a few puzzles to do while relaxing. I love this new game.
 

Rules:
  • Each number must appear in one and only one rectangle.
  • You must use enough rectangles to fill the playing board.
  • The number in a rectangle is the area of the rectangle (or number of squares that it takes up). E.g. a 10 could be in a 1x10 or 2x5 rectangle.
 

You can go to this flash site to play online, but given that I am using my iPad more than a desktop these days (a non flash friendly device) I had to search for an iOS app and have come up with the following free app: Shikaku that has about 20 free puzzles. There are also some additional puzzles, they come at a price of 50 for $2.99 e.g. Shikaku #1
 

Application to Teaching This would be an excellent activity to investigate areas of rectangles with a Year 7 class. You could also look at potential links between area and perimeter. Students could come up with their own modified game where numbers represent perimeters.
 



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