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Chess sudoku — Logic and elimination

Ages 7 and up · about 8 minutes · 8by8verse Chess Lab

What it teaches

Deduction by elimination; holding several constraints at once.

The story to tell first

Number-place puzzles became a craze around the world in the 2000s. Ours swaps the digits for chess pieces, and the thinking stays the same: you never guess. You ask, “what can this square NOT be?” until only one answer is left.

Three questions to ask

• Which square did you fill first, and how were you sure?
• What is the difference between guessing and knowing?
• Could a grid like this have two right answers? How would you check?

Without a screen

Draw a four-by-four grid on the board with five clues and solve it aloud as a class, saying the reason for every square.