Kazu Sagashi Puzzles

These kazu sagashi puzzles from Naoki Inaba involve searching for squares with the specified number of fruit pieces. They have always been a big hit with my students!

Puzzle Source

These kazu sagashi puzzles are the creation of prolific Japanese puzzle creator Naoki Inaba.

I was introduced to this logic puzzle in 2016 when I discovered Inaba’s area maze puzzles and went to his website (written entirely in Japanese) looking for more.

Since then, I have translated several of these puzzles into English to use with my students. Recently, I went looking for a new puzzle to use with my students, and I settled on the Kazu Sagashi puzzle to translate.

Using these Puzzles in the Classroom

When introducing these puzzles to students, I often refer to them as Apple and Orange puzzles. I love how these puzzles take on several different variations as you progress through the different levels.

When I used these with my students, I only gave them the first four levels. Each of these levels has a very similar set of instructions.

These kazu sagashi puzzles are in no way my own creation. All credit goes to Naoki Inaba. I have simply retyped the original puzzles to make them easier to use in an English-speaking classroom.

Kazu Sagashi Instructions

Let’s take a look at the different kazu sagashi puzzle variations and their instructions for solving.

Level 1

In Level 1, students are presented with a set of squares. Some squares contain an apple. Other squares do not. The goal is to identify a 2 x 2 square which holds the specified number of apples. The first puzzle has a 1 beside it. This means the goal is to find a 2 x 2 square that only contains a single apple. Do you see it?

Level 2

It’s the same set-up as before, but this time we are looking for a 3 x 3 square.

Level 3

With Level 3, we’re back to 2 x 2 squares with the added twist that some of the individual squares now contain more than one apple.

Level 4

Level 4 continues the trend of multiple apples with a larger, 3 x 3 square.

I’ve only used these four levels with students. My Algebra 2 classes had a bit of difficulty wrapping their minds around the instructions to get started, but my Pre-Calculus classes jumped right into solving the puzzles without any help or clarification from me. The students really enjoyed the puzzles. A few days after we did these, a student asked if we could do more of those apple puzzles instead of the lesson I had planned for the day!

We had quite a few days of interrupted instruction in April where I only ended up seeing half of my classes due to standardized testing in the morning, and I found these were the perfect task to give students to keep their minds working on a day that might have been wasted otherwise. These did not take anywhere near the entire class period. But, that was okay because many of my students used the extra time to retake quizzes, complete missing work, or work on assignments for another class.

If you’ve been wondering why I like to refer to these as Apple and Orange Puzzles when so far the puzzles have only contained apples, you are about to find out!

Level 5

Level 5 tasks you with finding a 2 x 2 square which meets a specified requirement instead of a specific number of apples as before. In the first problem for this level, you need to find a 2 x 2 square that contains an equal number of apples and oranges. For the second problem, the square needs to contain more oranges than apples.

Level 6

Level 6 continues this new trend but with 3 x 3 squares.

Level 7

Level 7 changes things up once again by specifying what the difference between the number of apples and oranges must be.

Digital Version of Kazu Sagashi Puzzles

Kathy Henderson has shared a Desmos Activity Builder Version of these Kazu Sagashi Puzzles.

Pin for Later

Not quite ready to use these puzzles in your classroom just yet? Pin for later on pinterest!