Learn it on Lably
Conway's Game of Life and fractals, as two examples, may also be considered mathematical puzzles even though the solver interacts with them only at the beginning by providing a set of initial conditions. After these conditions are set, the rules of the puzzle determine all subsequent changes and moves. Many of the puzzles are well known because they were discussed by Martin Gardner in his "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American. Mathematical puzzles are sometimes used to motivate students in teaching elementary school math problem solving techniques. Creative thinking – or "thinking outside the box" – often helps to find the solution.
List of mathematical puzzles
Numbers, arithmetic, and algebra
- Cross-figures or cross number puzzles
- Dyson numbers
- Four fours
- KenKen
- Water pouring puzzle
- The monkey and the coconuts
- Pirate loot problem
- Verbal arithmetics
- 24 Game
- Number Sequences - puzzles where you guess the missing number
Combinatorial
- Cryptograms
- Fifteen Puzzle
- Kakuro
- Rubik's Cube and other sequential movement puzzles
- Str8ts a number puzzle based on sequences
- Sudoku
- Sujiko
- Think-a-Dot
- Tower of Hanoi
- Bridges Game
Analytical or differential
- Ant on a rubber rope
- See also: Zeno's paradoxes
Probability
Tiling, packing, and dissection
- Bedlam cube
- Conway puzzle
- Mutilated chessboard problem
- Packing problem
- Pentominoes tiling
- Slothouber–Graatsma puzzle
- Soma cube
- T puzzle
- Tangram
Involves a board
- Conway's Game of Life
- Mutilated chessboard problem
- Peg solitaire
- Sudoku
- Nine dots problem
Chessboard tasks
- Eight queens puzzle
- Knight's Tour
- No-three-in-line problem
Topology, knots, graph theory
The fields of knot theory and topology, especially their non-intuitive conclusions, are often seen as a part of recreational mathematics.
Mechanical
- Rubik's Cube
- Think-a-Dot
- Matchstick puzzle
0-player puzzles
- Conway's Game of Life
- Flexagon
- Polyominoes