Teaching young children the joy of thinking — Recently Enders, my beautiful grandson, turned six. He is a bright boy with extraordinary linguistic skills. And a very astute grasp of things, like missing planets and deadly dangerous butterflies. But one thing he had not encountered yet was logical puzzles, like the ones I had brought up his father…

Teaching young children the joy of thinking — There is a certain fascination that logical puzzles exert, even at a very young age. Like at six, when a bright child will display great joy while solving them, and even become hooked in the process. I reported previously on how it started with my grandson Enders. After a few…

Are chess super-talents generally smarter than regular kids? — Remember my story, The Magic of Logic (2), where I described a logical puzzle I gave my grandson Enders on his sixth birthday? He and many other young and generally very talented kids have been subjected to this and other logical problems. The above picture shows Gukesh in January this…

Entertain your kids with this kind of diversion. They will love it! — Yesterday I completed my second course in logic for talented students of a local school. They were ten to thirteen years old and after the final class had to give an evaluation. The result was hardly surprising: I had been able to feel it during classes. The students were delighted…

How to keep the interest of bright young kids — Last Wednesday I finished my second logic course, held for especially talented students at the local school. This time I had fourteen kids attending, between the ages of ten and thirteen. I was a little apprehensive, since the first course had 15 and 16-year-olds. But the younger kids were, if…

A soccer star is my new treasure-trove of logical puzzles — Marco is a soccer star. He played in one of the top clubs in the country and in the German national team. Now, at 50, he is often on TV and active in the organisation and promotion of football. Marco is also a chess player, hobby level. He is very…

It’s all about scales and weights. Why are so many young kids currently weighing potatoes? Perhaps you can help them?! — Recently (in January 2020) I travelled to Chennai, India, where a former World Chess Champion and a World Champion challenger, both good friends of mine, were doing a training camp with the most talented young chess players in the world. It is a remarkable experience, and I have reported on…

Keep kids happy and occupied in pandemic times — Enders and Hennes, our grandsons, are currently homeschooling. That is caused by the Covid-19 pandemic that has swept around the world. They cannot go to school, cannot meet their best friends, their doting grandparents. I asked Enders, eight years old, whether he was glad he had “holidays”, that he didn’t…

Keeping kids happy and occupied in pandemic times — Time for another logic lesson? Recently I gave grandson Enders a new puzzle: You have two hourglasses. One measures five minutes, and one seven minutes. You need to measure exactly thirteen minutes (to boil goose eggs perfectly?). How can you do this using these two hourglasses? Enders and family spent…

Teaching children the joys of thinking — quick puzzles for kids — Recently during a walk we met a young lady with a cute 1½-year-old child. “Is it a boy or a girl?” I asked. “A boy,” she replied. Afterwards I asked our grandsons Enders and Hennes: what could the lady have replied? She had three possible truthful answers! This they could…

Teaching kids logic and science in COVID-19 times — A fine late summer day, sunny and warm. The grandkids are back from a two-week holiday in Italy. The family has been very cautious, but we have to keep distance for a while. Time for a little logic. In Covid-19 times, their parents have insisted, we have to avoid infection…

A few more logical tasks for kids in Covid times — Social life in general has ground to a halt, for the grandkids group play is heavily restricted. We usually meet them in the garden. Strolling around in unusually beautiful November weather I give them some new logical problems. Here’s the first one this week: A man needs to take two…

The electric train riddle and more — Over Christmas I traditionally run a chess puzzle contest on the news page of my company. The problems have to be “computer resistant” — it has become trivially easy, and also very tempting, to simply switch on a “chess engine” to get the solution in seconds. So I use unorthodox…

On elevators and dishonest couriers — With the pandemic flaring up again, in Europe, interaction with the beloved grandkids might soon be restricted. Once again. Of course we are fully vaccinated, but they are too young, and vulnerable. I predict that schools will be soon shut down. Once again. Thank heavens for adventure playgrounds, which they…

Finding the three mistakes in a sentence; and how to identify a poisoned cask of wine — Today was Enders-and-Hennes day. We spent it at the local lake, where an unusual number of families had gathered, drawn there by the sun and the easing of Covid restrictions. After a few weeks of abstinence, the boys were glad to exuberantly run around the water-side playground, full of boundless…

Who hasn’t gone through the Monte Hall problem? So, why not confront Enders and Hennes with it? — Recently, they got a vivid description of the famous probability puzzle: you are in a game show, and the host shows you three doors. Behind one of them is a beautiful new car, behind the other two are sacks of potatoes (in the original version they are goats). The host…

Give them puzzles that make them think — Okay, “lie” is a provocative word, clickbait, to catch your attention. What I am advocating is: don’t automatically give children straight answers. Argue with them, force them to think. That is how I brought up my two sons, occasionally to the horror of friends and relatives. “Why do you keep…

This Danish polymath had a formative influence on my brain: not the least because of his invention of a famous construction puzzle — In my early teens I discovered this great polymath, inventor and poet. His writings never failed to tickle my fantasy and fuel my sense of humour. In fact you might notice my style of writing and narration still bears traces of the PH influence. Piet Hein, born in 1905, studied…

A little test to assess the sense of fairness in children — Enders and Hennes are our two grandchildren, now nine and eight years old, respectively. Enders is super-smart, solves logical and mathematical problems like a pro, understands sciences like evolution and astronomy quite deeply. …

How to help school children understand one of the central findings of science. — I have written about evolution (which was part of my university studies of evolutionary epistomology). So now, bringing up two wonderful grandkids, the subject keeps coming up — as you can see in some previous articles: How evolution works and On Evolution and Acorns. These interactions with Enders and Hennes…