Hashi Puzzles

One of the things I’ve most liked about introducing my students to new logic puzzles is that they’ve been new to me as well!  I was initially hesitant to try the hashiwokakero puzzles with my students because they sounded scary.  I learned about these puzzles from reading the slides from Jeffrey Wanko’s NCTM presentation.  You can check out the slides from his various presentations on using logic puzzles in the math classroom on his website.

My kids preferred calling these “Bridge” puzzles.  And, I’m totally okay with that.  Though, I find myself thinking of them as “Hashi” puzzles.

I put a puzzle on the SMARTBoard for us to solve together as a class.  After working through it together with a few bumps along the way, I gave students their own two puzzles to solve.  (Puzzles B and C from the previously linked document).

Here are the rules for hashi puzzles:

• The bridges must begin and end at islands, traveling in a straight line (horizontally or
vertically)
• The bridges must not cross any other bridges or islands
• No more than two bridges can connect a pair of islands
• The total number of bridges connected to each island must match the number on that
island

Several students decided these were their favorite logic puzzles yet.  

I let one of my classes vote one day as to which puzzle they would like a chance to do again, and these puzzles were a huge winner by a landslide.