Happy Puzzle Company Workshop – March 2013

On the fourth of March the Happy Puzzle Company came to the school. They had brought lots of puzzles for us to solve. First we were put into groups of six. We were then given a Penguin Puzzle. You had to try and balance all 24 Penguins on the wobbling iceberg. It was great fun to do.

Our next puzzle was to make a puzzle road circuit. It was a very big puzzle but my group finished first. We then had to make a model of a castle. It was very difficult, but we had a picture of the finished model to refer to. It was tricky but we didn’t give up.

After that puzzle we had to use seven different shapes to make a square. We had two big triangles, two smaller triangles, a medium sized triangle, a square and a rhombus. It was the most difficult out of all the tasks. Finally we finished it and were very happy. The final puzzle we did was a Savannah puzzle, the pieces were oddly shaped because they were rounded and curved. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to do another puzzle but the afternoon was a thoroughly enjoyable one.
By Aanya

This term we were extremely lucky to have the Happy Puzzle Company come to our school, who gave us several cunning puzzles to accomplish. They ranged from balancing penguins on wobbly icebergs, making a complex pattern with different coloured jigsaws and making a roadmap with special pieces to complete a circuit. I enjoyed balancing the penguins the most; I felt this was quite tricky, but at the same time quite a silly idea! It was actually quite frustrating because the penguins kept falling off the iceberg. Unfortunately, as hard as we tried, we only managed to balance two penguins at once by the end of the exercise. I will never think about penguins in the same way again!

I think this was a very enjoyable and useful session, because we learnt to work together as a team to solve curious problems. Sometimes the answers are not as simple as they may seem at first. This has definitely helped me to think more deeply about difficult problems and I look forward to doing it again soon.
By Aleena