Puzzle Pines

What your child practices

Puzzle Pines is built around two habits of strong math thinkers: making sense of a problem and sticking with it (Math Practice 1), and looking for structure (Math Practice 7). Each kind of puzzle works on one of them in a different way:

• Trail Maze: plan a path for Bramble to the cabin. Bigger mazes add fireflies to collect and more than one way round, so the best order has to be worked out.
• Log Fit: turn and flip wooden blocks to fill a gap in a cabin wall. This is the spatial skill behind rotations, reflections and composing shapes (1.G.2, 4.G.3, 8.G.1 ideas).
• Mirror Pond: tap mirrors to flip them and bend a beam of lantern light into a cabin window. Kids see how a mirror turns light by a right angle, and plan several turns ahead.
• Acorn Scales: every little scale is balanced. How many acorns balance the big one? This is early algebra: equal sides and putting one thing in place of another (1.OA.7, 3.OA.4, 6.EE.5 ideas).
• Who Lives Where: read clues like "The fox lives somewhere to the left of the owl" and move each critter into the right cabin. Every clue can be read aloud, with pictures for each critter.

How to play

Tap Today's trail for three mixed puzzles, or Free play to pick any kind your child has opened. The first time, a grown-up or child picks Ages 6 to 8 or Ages 9 to 12, which sets where the puzzles start.

Each puzzle has one short instruction, with a button that reads it out loud. Kids find the rules by trying: the beam of light moves every time a mirror flips, blocks snap in only where they fit, the scale tips the real way, and clues that are not true yet glow.

When a puzzle is solved, a lantern lights on the trail. Back on the trail, Bramble walks on, and every few lanterns there is a cabin where a new friend moves in. Cabins open Mirror Pond, Acorn Scales and Who Lives Where, then a mushroom ring, a lily pond, a waterfall and the Star Lookout.

Five kinds of puzzles, eight levels each

Every puzzle can be solved

Puzzles are made fresh each time, so they never run out. Before a puzzle is shown, a solver checks it: every maze reaches the cabin with every firefly, every mirror puzzle has a way to light the window, every wall gap can be filled with the blocks given, every set of scales has exactly one answer, and every clue puzzle has exactly one way the critters can live, with no clue left over that isn't needed.

Mistakes that teach

Nothing is timed and nothing is lost. When the scale tips, it says which side is too light or too heavy, and the next step of reasoning appears, like "Scale 2: 1 mushroom balances 1 apple and 1 acorn. 1 apple is 3 acorns. So 1 mushroom weighs the same as 4 acorns." In clue puzzles, Check makes the clue that is not true yet glow, so your child knows where to look.

The lantern Hint button shows one step: footprints in the maze, one mirror flipped, one block placed, one more line of reasoning or one critter moved home. Using it is fine, and the game simply counts that puzzle as a helped one.

How it adapts

Each kind of puzzle keeps its own level from 1 to 8. Two smooth solves in a row (no hint, no big detours, no wrong checks) move it up a level. Two bumpy ones move it back down, without any fuss. Puzzle kinds that were tricky come back sooner in the trail of the day, so practice goes where it helps most.

Today's trail

Each day there is a short trail of three puzzles, picked from the kinds that need practice and the ones not played for a while. Finishing it brings out a new star over the forest. There are no streaks and nothing is lost on days your child doesn't play, and Free play is always open.

For grown-ups: the corner

Press and hold For grown-ups on the title screen. You will see how many puzzles your child solved, the level of each kind, how many were smooth solves and how many hints were used. You can turn read-aloud on or off, open every kind of puzzle right away, and change the starting challenge.

Tips for grown-ups

• Ask your child to explain a clue out loud: which cabins does it rule out, and why?
• Try the scales at home: how many spoons balance a cup on a kitchen scale? Then ask how many would balance two cups.
• Hold a small mirror at a slant and shine a flashlight at it to see the light turn, just like on Mirror Pond.
• Cut shapes from paper and try fitting them into an outline, turning and flipping them over.

Privacy and safety

There are no ads, accounts, chat or leaderboards, and we don't run analytics or tracking on our learning games. The game makes no outside requests. Progress is saved only on your device. It's free in the browser on a phone, tablet or computer.

Questions