If you have ever played the NYT Connections game after solving your daily Wordle, you’re going to love this puzzle style math review game. Your students will love this one as well!
GAME OVERVIEW: This puzzle style math review game has students solve problems to reveal letters to 16 mystery words. Those mystery words are then categorized into 4 groups of 4 based on how they are connected.
All 16 words have a common theme (ex. back to school), but the 4 groups are broken down even further (ex. school subjects, people at school, etc.). The first team to solve their problems, decode their mystery words, and place them into the proper groups — WINS!
PREPARATION
Start off by deciding how your students will divide up the problems to be solved. There are 8 question sheets total (two mystery words per sheet). Each of the 8 question sheets contain 12 problems to solve for a total of 96 problems.
I like the flexibility of this puzzle style math review game because students can work individually on a question page (12 problems), or teams can work together to solve all the problems on the 8 question sheets.
After you decide how many groups you will have, be sure to have enough copies for each group to have all 8 question sheets. Then, you will need to print an answer sheet for each team to write their final groupings of mystery words. Voila! That’s it! Just some printing on your part.
PLAYING THE PUZZLE STYLE MATH REVIEW GAME
As students begin solving their problems, encourage them to answer all 12 questions per sheet. Often, they will know what the mystery word is after solving just a few problems. My students are required to fill in the entire sheet to ensure proper review and practice for the concept. But hey! If you’re short on time, make it a free for all. It could make it more interesting in the end.
How to solve for mystery words
The answer to each problem reveals the letter that should be written above that answer on the bottom of each page. Two mystery words will be revealed per question sheet.
When students have discovered all 16 mystery words, they are ready to place them into groups.
This game could, of course, be created on your own. But, lucky for you, I have some for you to try. Just head on over to my TPT store, click on the category “Math Links Game” on the left side of your screen, and make your life easy!
I also have a few other games that my students love to play. You can read about them here: