Filter by: Content type: ALL Problems Articles Games Stage: All Stage 1&2 Stage 2&3 Stage 3&4 Stage 4&5 Challenge level:
An interactive activity for one to experiment with a tricky tessellation
An interactive game to be played on your own or with friends. Imagine you are having a party. Each person takes it in turns to stand behind the chair where they will get the most chocolate.
A game for 1 person. Can you work out how the dice must be rolled from the start position to the finish? Play on line.
A game for 2 people that can be played on line or with pens and paper. Combine your knowledege of coordinates with your skills of strategic thinking.
An interactive game for 1 person. You are given a rectangle with 50 squares on it. Roll the dice to get a percentage between 2 and 100. How many squares is this? Keep going until you get 100. . . .
Choose the size of your pegboard and the shapes you can make. Can you work out the strategies needed to block your opponent?
A game for 2 players. Given a board of dots in a grid pattern, players take turns drawing a line by connecting 2 adjacent dots. Your goal is to complete more squares than your opponent.
A game to be played against the computer, or in groups. Pick a 7-digit number. A random digit is generated. What must you subract to remove the digit from your number? the first to zero wins.
A shape and space game for 2,3 or 4 players. Be the last person to be able to place a pentomino piece on the playing board. Play with card, or on the computer.
A game in which players take it in turns to try to draw quadrilaterals (or triangles) with particular properties. Is it possible to fill the game grid?
A train building game for 2 players.
Can you make the birds from the egg tangram?
Here is a version of the game 'Happy Families' for you to make and play.
Work out the fractions to match the cards with the same amount of money.
Here is a solitaire type environment for you to experiment with. Which targets can you reach?
A game for 1 or 2 people. Use the interactive version, or play with friends. Try to round up as many counters as possible.
A game for two or more players that uses a knowledge of measuring tools. Spin the spinner and identify which jobs can be done with the measuring tool shown.
A game for 2 people that everybody knows. You can play with a friend or online. If you play correctly you never lose!
A card pairing game involving knowledge of simple ratio.
Hover your mouse over the counters to see which ones will be removed. Click to remover them. The winner is the last one to remove a counter. How you can make sure you win?
A game in which players take it in turns to turn up two cards. If they can draw a triangle which satisfies both properties they win the pair of cards. And a few challenging questions to follow...
Try to stop your opponent from being able to split the piles of counters into unequal numbers. Can you find a strategy?
An extension of noughts and crosses in which the grid is enlarged and the length of the winning line can to altered to 3, 4 or 5.
A game to make and play based on the number line.
A game in which players take it in turns to choose a number. Can you block your opponent?
Why not challenge a friend to play this transformation game?
Use the tangram pieces to make our pictures, or to design some of your own!
A game for 2 people. Take turns placing a counter on the star. You win when you have completed a line of 3 in your colour.
A game for 2 or more people, based on the traditional card game Rummy. Players aim to make two `tricks', where each trick has to consist of a picture of a shape, a name that describes that shape, and. . . .
A complicated game played on a 9 x 9 checkered grid.
A maths-based Football World Cup simulation for teachers and students to use.
A Sudoku with clues given as sums of entries.
A Sudoku with clues as ratios.
Practise your diamond mining skills and your x,y coordination in this homage to Pacman.
This pair of linked Sudokus matches letters with numbers and hides a seasonal greeting. Can you find it?
Basic strategy games are particularly suitable as starting points for investigations. Players instinctively try to discover a winning strategy, and usually the best way to do this is to analyse. . . .
Can you work out how to win this game of Nim? Does it matter if you go first or second?
This is a game for 2 players. Each player has 4 counters each, and wins by blocking their opponent's counters. A good follow-on from two stones.
A simple game of patience which often comes out. Can you explain why?
Start with any number of counters in any number of piles. 2 players take it in turns to remove any number of counters from a single pile. The winner is the player to take the last counter.
The aim of the game is to slide the green square from the top right hand corner to the bottom left hand corner in the least number of moves.
A Sudoku with a twist.
The game uses a 3x3 square board. 2 players take turns to play, either placing a red on an empty square, or changing a red to orange, or orange to green. The player who forms 3 of 1 colour in a line. . . .
Players take it in turns to choose a dot on the grid. The winner is the first to have four dots that can be joined to form a square.
An article for teachers and pupils that encourages you to look at the mathematical properties of similar games.
An ordinary set of dominoes can be laid out as a 7 by 4 magic rectangle in which all the spots in all the columns add to 24, while those in the rows add to 42. Try it! Now try the magic square...
Advent Calendar 2010 - a mathematical game for every day during the run-up to Christmas.
Here is a machine with four coloured lights. Can you develop a strategy to work out the rules controlling each light?
In this article for teachers, Liz Woodham describes the criteria she uses to choose mathematical games for the classroom and shares some examples from NRICH.