Five Circles Puzzle

This number-placing logic puzzle called “Five Circles” focuses on making the numbers on each circle in the diagram add up to 22.

Instructions

Place the numbers 1-9 on the circular spaces so that the sum of the four numbers on each circle is equal to 22. Four numbers have already been placed for you.

Puzzle Source

This puzzle is from a collection of 199 different mathematical puzzles offered as a free resource from IREM de Lyon. This is a top-notch puzzle resource if you speak French.

I sadly do not speak French, but I was able to use the Google Translate app to translate quite a few of the puzzle instructions in order to use them in my classroom. Other puzzles I typed up from this same resource is the U Sums Puzzle, Magic H Puzzle, Lines of 3 Puzzle, 4 x 4 Checkered Square Puzzle, Equal Sums Puzzle, Square Sums Puzzle, and the very popular Loops Puzzle.

This specific puzzle is #12 – Vingt-deux!.

Printing and Prepping the Puzzle

This puzzle is designed to print on letter-sized 8.5 x 11 inch paper, but you could easily scale it to print on A4 paper as well.

The number tile cards are designed to be printed on colored paper or cardstock. I like printing on Astrobrights paper to give my activities a pop of bright color.

You could also forego the number tile cards and slide the puzzle in a dry erase pocket and simply have the students write in the digits 1-9 by hand. The benefit of the tiles is that students can easily see what numbers they have and have not used yet.

MATH = LOVE RECOMMENDS…

I cannot imagine teaching math without my dry erase pockets! They instantly make any activity more engaging and save me countless hours at the copy machine since I can use the same class sets of copies year after year.

Here are my current go-to recommendations:

• 8.5 x 11 Inch Dry Erase Pockets from Puroma
• 11 x 17 Inch Dry Erase Pockets from C-Line Products
• Expo Dry Erase Markers

I used this puzzle in my classroom as one of my Puzzles of the Week. I prepared several copies of the puzzle and hung it on my dry erase board using a magnetic pocket which I picked up from Amazon. They have been a real game-changer in my classroom organization!