Slug Salad
Slug Salad is an addition puzzle. You've got a whole bunch of slugs, and they're going to eat their way through these leaves. Every time a slug moves, it must move to a larger number. And whenever a slug stops, the sum of all the places it visited before must be equal to the place where it ends. So 1 plus 2 plus 3 is equal to 6, and that one works.
On the first leaf, you can see where a slug must start. Then 2 plus 3 plus 7 is equal to 12, so that's one of our slugs, and another is 4 plus 8, which is equal to 12. Then I go to a tougher puzzle, the maple leaf, one that I probably won't have as easy a time on. It's immediately harder. Do I go one, two? Then where do I go? I can't go to the same number, and I can't go to eight.
I didn't study this leaf before I made the video, and I think that's a great way to teach: not knowing the result. It makes it more exciting, because maybe I'm going to fail. I guess a little, I get stuck, I back up and try something else. You can see that even though there's some guessing, there's also some logic to these things. And in the end, 1 plus 3 plus 7 is equal to 11, everything fits, and we've solved it.
- Grades
- 2–4
- Subjects
- Adding & Subtracting, Counting & Estimating
- Kind
- Puzzle
- Original
- Slug Salad at MathPickle
Finding Zero
Graceful Tree
Galaxea