Eight Lettered Squares Puzzle

I ran across the eight lettered squares puzzle, and I had to stop everything and try it out. Then, I had to make my husband stop everything and try it out with me. Math puzzles on a Saturday evening? Yes, we are THAT family!

The puzzle comes from The Little Giant Encyclopedia of Puzzles by The Diagram Group.

The puzzle that caught my eye was the 82nd (of 318) puzzles in the book. The premise is simple. Take a rectangular piece of paper including eight letters. Fold the paper so that the letters end up in alphabetical order, one on top of the other.  No cutting allowed!

I immediately opened up Publisher and got to typing up the eight lettered squares puzzle. This is what I came up with:

The husband and I cut out our rectangles and started folding.

Here was my thought process:

Hmmm…this is fun.

Nope. This is impossible. 

Wait. This is just like Manifold!

If I can do Manifold, I can do this.

Wait…what?

I can’t do this.

I think I can do this.

YES!

Meanwhile, the husband is still folding and folding and folding and folding. For once, I figured out a puzzle BEFORE Shaun. This is rare. He usually solves puzzles at least twice as fast as me. I think my years of fiddling with origami may have put me at a slight advantage when it came to solving this puzzle.

One thing I realized while solving the puzzle was that I needed to find a better solution for using it with students. The way I typed up the puzzle uses one page/student.

So, I decided to type up a version with multiple puzzles to one page to make it a bit more friendly on your copy budget!

My last period Pre-AP Algebra 2 class has become a bit obsessed with puzzles over the last few days. On Friday, I had a few students ask to stay AFTER SCHOOL (ON A FRIDAY) to work on the Color Square Puzzle.

I’m excited to let them tackle this new eight lettered squares puzzle!