active puzzles

Merouan

I'm planning an event for a mentorship program I am in (we pair underserved kids one on one with college students for a year), and our theme for this event is creative thinking/puzzles/riddles. I was wondering if anyone had any good puzzles, preferably active, and for groups of 10 or so.

One example I can give that will maybe give you a better idea of what I'm aiming for is the human knot. Basically you have a group of 10 people in a circle, and you put your hands in the center, grab two different hands from the opposite side of the circle, and then try and untangle the group without letting go.

The ages of the kids ranges from 7-14, so I'm trying to find puzzles that are age specific (we won't give the same puzzles to the same kids). Any puzzle that's kind of physical, involves the whole group, (or even just two people- the mentor and the kid), and is easy to set up (budget) would be awesome. I've had better luck looking for riddles, but if anyone has a favorite it'd be awesome if you shared them with me. Thanks!

Lerage

Might not be quite what you're looking for but give small groups some newspaper, selotape, string and scissors, and tell them either that they have to make clothes for a fashion show out of the items, or (even more fun) try to make the tallest tower, using the items.

If you're going for riddles, try putting a few in that have "trick" answers, along the lines of these:
http://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=inteltest

But not too many or they will probably get annoyed - plus some of those are fairly well-known.


Edit: I just remembered a really great one similar to yours:

Get two pieces of string, about 1 or 2 metres long, and lasso tie each end. One child puts the two ends of one piece loosely round their wrists, and so does anotehr child - but the two pieces must be crossed, like an X, so they are basically tied together. The aim is to get separated without taking the strings off their wrists. The solution is to loop a part of the other person's string and pull it through the loop on your wrist. It's very difficult to explain (plus I'm not great at explaining!), so if you don't quite understand, I'll try again

Merouan

Thanks for the response! Haha yeah could you just got over the setup again? Do you tie each end around a different wrist, or is it the same wrist? (does it matter?) From the setup I should be able to figure it out, as a test to see how appropriate it is for each age group

Smasher

Another good one is the hoop drop. You have everyone stand in a circle facing inward stick their pointer fingers out, then balance a hula hoop on their fingers. The object is to lower the hula hoop to the ground, with the constraints that the hoop has to remain essentially level at all times and nobody is allowed to grab or hold the hula hoop, only have it rest on their fingers. It sounds simple, and there is a pretty simple solution to it, but if you haven't figured that solution out when you try it it's almost impossible.

Lerage

Ok, to make it a bit clearer, I decided to show off my awesome Paint skills - here's how it should be at the start:


And then...I realised that I've kind of forgotten the way to actually escape and solve the puzzle :oops:

But I THINK that it's something like this:


Basically, I know that one of the person's strings has to be looped through the part round someone's wrist - that's the trick that people don't guess...though unfortunately you might have to have a play round to try to figure it out - sorry about that!

Edit: Smasher, I'm intrigued to know the solution now....:P

LewieP's Mummy

Pick up a paper cup filled with water without spilling any water - you can't touch it with your hands, and your only tools are elastic bands and string. You can do this with 2 - 10 people easily, or just have small groups doing it at the same time.

Sentry

items needed:
eggs
paper
straws
small amounts of tape
a balloon

split everyone into teams and give them one egg and the items listed. Tell them they have to make a cradle for their egg that has to survive being thrown. The team that throws their egg the furthest without it sustaining any damage wins.

Improvolone

Perhaps some group improv games? www.humanpingpongball.com has a nice list, last time I checked. If you think a game, not so much a puzzle would also work, let me know and maybe I can put more thought into a specific one.

Kate of Lokys

My best friend's father used to teach a college-level "critical thinking" class, and she passed along a couple of stories from him.

The first story involved a mapping project. The students were divided into small groups, and each group was given supplies: a pad of graph paper, a ruler, a protractor, pens and pencils, etc. Then he told the class to draw a map of the floor of the building they were in, and to make it as accurate as possible, labelling everything.

So, they all got to work, arguing about the number of rooms along any given hallway, sketching stuff out... then after about ten minutes, one person put up their hand and said "Um, Mr. Cook... are we allowed to leave the classroom?" "Of course!" he said. "I never said you couldn't." They all streamed out into the hallways and started pacing out distances, recording room numbers, and trying to figure out angles.

The real kicker?

Not a single student in that class noticed the completely accurate, to-scale emergency floor map posted right beside the door.

The second story was even simpler. One day, when his students came into class, they found little styrofoam cups upside down on each of their desks. He gave them their instructions: "There's an object hidden under each of those cups. Your task is to figure out what it is."

So, they started moving the cups from side to side, listening to the noise coming from underneath. They smelled around the outside of the cups, a couple of intrepid ones even slid a piece of paper under the cup and lifted the whole thing up to estimate how much the object weighed. And, again, it took a good five or ten minutes before anyone asked "Uh, Mr. Cook... are we allowed to pick up the cups?" (Of course they were).

Willeth

Smasher wrote: »

Another good one is the hoop drop. You have everyone stand in a circle facing inward stick their pointer fingers out, then balance a hula hoop on their fingers. The object is to lower the hula hoop to the ground, with the constraints that the hoop has to remain essentially level at all times and nobody is allowed to grab or hold the hula hoop, only have it rest on their fingers. It sounds simple, and there is a pretty simple solution to it, but if you haven't figured that solution out when you try it it's almost impossible.

We did this at my previous job. I was trying to get everyone into a 3-2-1 stand-kneel-prone system and everyone else was just 'no hey, we'll do this gradually and it'll be fine.'

Sigh.

Merouan

Sweet, these suggestions are great! Thanks everyone. Gives me a great starting point. I particularly like the ones that involve building something.. like the egg drop, or the tallest building. I didn't even think about stuff like that.

Yeah, I'd really like to encourage the kids to think creatively and critically. We did this "game" at a summer camp where the kids are blindfolded, and are put in a square rope area. They are told they are in a maze, and that by following the rope they can get out. They are also told that if they need any help at any time, they can raise their hand. It takes most of the kids 5-10 minutes to go around in circles following the rope before they give up and raise their hand. (once they raise their hand, we take them out of the rope area)

Smasher

Willeth wrote: »

Smasher wrote: »

Another good one is the hoop drop. You have everyone stand in a circle facing inward stick their pointer fingers out, then balance a hula hoop on their fingers. The object is to lower the hula hoop to the ground, with the constraints that the hoop has to remain essentially level at all times and nobody is allowed to grab or hold the hula hoop, only have it rest on their fingers. It sounds simple, and there is a pretty simple solution to it, but if you haven't figured that solution out when you try it it's almost impossible.

We did this at my previous job. I was trying to get everyone into a 3-2-1 stand-kneel-prone system and everyone else was just 'no hey, we'll do this gradually and it'll be fine.'

Sigh.

Yeah. It sounds so simple, but inevitably people start going down at different speeds, and so multiple people try to correct for the hoop becoming tilted, but nobody knows how anybody else is going to correct for it, and so it starts tilting further and further and increasingly quickly and then it's just a clusterfuck.

Leerage: Willeth's solution seems like it would work pretty well, though I haven't tried it myself. The best one I'm aware of is

to designate a leader whom everyone else follows. The leader moves their finger down at a constant, moderately slow speed and doesn't make any attempt to adjust for tilt. Everyone else then matches the height of the leader's finger, adjusting their own finger if they get behind or ahead of the leader but ignoring everyone else's finger. This works because the feedback loops that doom normal attempts at the problem never get started, since the leader doesn't pay any attention to what anyone else is doing and everyone else only responds to him or her.

Ideally the leader will do a quick demo beforehand of how fast they'll move their finger just to make things even smoother, but it's not really necessary.

Deadfall

Oil Pipeline:

You will need a marble or some kind of small ball.
Cardboard tues with the top cut off, lengthwise (as in, not hamburger, but cut it hot-dog style)
Or if you can't get cardboard, ping pong paddles work.
A bucket or large cup or bowl.

Two teams start in a line shoulder to shoulder. They need to move the oil (the marble) from one end of the pipeline (the tubes) to the other and let it fall into a bucket. They cannot touch the marble with their hands, and it cannot hit the ground. If either of these happen, they must start over. The marble must run through each part of the tube or touch every paddle.

Nobody ever figures out that you don't need to stay in a line, and that you can have the marble go through your tube more than once.

Raiden333

Very simple one... Everyone stands in a circle, crosses their arms, and holds hands with the person next to them, so that each person's right hand is holding the left hand of the person on their left, and vice versa. The goal is for people to take turns twisting and untangling to get a full circle with no crossed arms, without anybody letting go of each other's hands.

The_Glad_Hatter

I'm a boyscout leader (not the creepy old kind... but the young dynamic cool kind..), so i love these kinda things. Off the top of my head, some of my favourites:
you'll need a folding ruler or a similar thin strip of wood.

1) this is going to seem rediculously easy, and we all mocked the guy who gave us the exercise, because it seemed rediculously easy....
fold the ruler into a straight strip, and give it to the kids.

the mission: take the ruler at shoulder height, and while all touching it, place it on the ground (if someone lets go, redo from start)

The rules:
- they may only touch the bottom of the ruler, not pinch the edges, or squeeze it between their fingers.
-they must all be touching it with some point of their body at all times

and no matter what they try, as soon as they just place it on their fingers/ palms, and they're ready to begin, the ruler is going to straight up. it's an uncontrollable action when you're holding a light item as a group. its hilarious to see yourself not being able to control the upward motion. it sounds weird, but try it!
edit: i just saw smasher suggested the same thing, but using a hula hoop... also good..

2) put the kids on a line, about 3 feet from eachother.
Choose one of the more expressive kids and set him about 10 ft away from the line. He has to arrange the other kids according to their birthday (or the month/ day in which they were born if the group is mixed).
But none of the kids are allowed to talk.
He has to find out their birthdays using gestures, and has to order the kids to move around using gestures.

i chose a creative funny, gangly 14-year-old to do this, and it was great to see him try to communicate clearly, while absolutely no-one understood... try to come up for a gesture for "august".. heheh...

Improvolone

OH! Have everyone close their eyes and arrange themselves according to height without speaking.
The last time I did this we wound up with two lines on opposite sides of the room.