Balanced Zebra
Both colours have to multiply out to the same number, and then to the largest that shape allows.
- Grades
- 3–6
- Subjects
- Multiplying & Dividing, Shapes & Space, Logic
- Kind
- Puzzle
- Cost
- Free, no account, no ads
What it is
Zebra’s field with nobody to play against. The board arrives all black; tap a hexagon and it turns white. Hexagons of one colour that touch make a herd, and a colour is worth its herd sizes multiplied together. The two colours have to come out worth the same, which is easy, and then as large as the shape will allow, which is not.
What it gives you to practise
The same multiplication insight as Zebra with the opponent taken away, so there is nothing to react to and nowhere to hide: every board is a question about how one fixed shape can be cut. Chains, loops, diamonds and triangles each break differently. The last pack changes the rule — the two colours must miss each other by exactly one, three and three against four and two — and every target printed on a board is the true best, found by a computer trying every way of painting it.
In a classroom
The maximum is never printed on the board before somebody reaches it, and that is deliberate. A class can hunt for a number nobody has told them, and the board will say when they have it.
The rules
A zebra's pelt is black and white, and so is this field of hexagons.
It arrives all black. Tap a hexagon and it turns white.
Hexagons of one colour that touch make a herd, and a colour's score is its herd sizes multiplied together.
Both colours must come out worth the same — and the puzzle is to make that number as big as it will go.
In the last pack they must miss each other by exactly one instead: three and three against four and two.
Near it on the shelf
- GozenYour next number is forced, so a prime is always coming — and on a prime only a square nobody watches will do.
- ZebraHerds multiply together, so three threes beat one nine — and a stone left on its own throws itself away.
- Fractured FractionsOne point cuts the whole picture at once, and every piece has to come out holding the fraction written on it.