Hands-on non-digital CS puzzles

We had a chance to bring several CS Unplugged -inspired puzzles to a local middle school and try them out with the 5th, 6th and 7th grade. It was really great to see kids engaged with deciphering wheels, towers of hanoi, balance puzzles, parity, 3-colorability and lots of other neat algorithms you can explore with your hands.

In the balance puzzle ("the busy miner") students had to find the counterfeight silver nugget (aka the light nugget) among seven nuggest, in the least number of weighings. I made the nuggets out of foil and Unifix cubes. A few clever students claimed …

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