4 Cards Playing Card Puzzle

This 4 Cards Playing Card Puzzle is actually three puzzles in one. Students are challenged to arrange four playing cards to fulfill three different challenges.

I printed jumbo cards and attached ceramic disc magnets to the back of each card so my students could easily manipulate the cards while trying to solve the three playing card challenges.

I typed up this puzzle years ago and laminated it, but I recently came across it in my file cabinet and realized that I have never actually used the puzzle with students or shared it here on the blog.

MATH = LOVE RECOMMENDS…

A laminator is a MUST-HAVE for me as a math teacher! I spent my first six years as a teacher at a school with a broken laminator, so I had to find a way to laminate things myself.

I’ve had several laminators over the years. I currently use a Scotch laminator at home and a Swingline laminator at school.

• Scotch Laminator
• Swingline Laminator
• Nuova Laminating Pouches

I highly recommend splurging a bit on the actual laminator and buying the cheapest laminating pouches you can find!

I decided to post each of the challenges separately, as pictured above. But I also created a printable version of the activity that lists all three challenges on a single page.

I also created jumbo printable playing cards that you can print and use with this puzzle if you want to post it on your dry erase board or smaller printable playing cards if you want students to solve the puzzle individually at their desks.

Of course, you could always use regular playing cards with this puzzle as well if you preferred.

The Three Challenges

• Arrange the cards so that exactly four pips are visible on each card.
• Arrange the cards so that exactly three pips are visible on each card.
• Arrange the cards so that the four cards display 1, 2, 3, and 4 pips respectively. The specific order of the 1-pip, 2-pip, 3-pip, and 4-pip cards isn’t important, only that there is one of each.

When I have shared puzzles like this in the past, some blog readers have expressed concern over whether students would understand what a “pip” was. I had this puzzle up all last week in my classroom, and multiple students tackled the puzzle without ever asking me what a “pip” was.

I think that students should be able to understand the meaning using context clues, but feel free to download the editable version and reword it if you think it will be too much for your students.

Puzzle Source

I ran across this puzzle in The Big, Big, Big Book of Brainteasers by The Grabarchuk Family. Challenge 1 is actually a classic brainteaser which was originally posed by Professor Hoffman in 1893.