Few years back when matchsticks were available in every household, people not only used them to light up the candles but also they were used as a medium to challenge their friends to solve some lateral thinking puzzles. But over the years, lighters have taken the place of matchboxes and somewhere down the line these “out of the box thinking” puzzles got lost. With minimal materials required these matchstick puzzles are great to keep your kids engaged while waiting at the restaurants.
Today, I introduced these brain teasers to my kids and together we solved couple of them. They jumped to the solution for some of them immediately but others were pretty challenging. Overall we had a lot of fun and a great time exercising our brain. So, let’s get started.
Correct the equation below by moving only 1 matchstick.
And the solution is to move the vertical matchstick from the addition operator to the number 6 to convert the number 6 to 8.
Another one, Move 2 matchsticks and reform the hoop in the same shape so that the ball is outside it
And the solution is to move the left matchstick down below parallel to the handle of the hoop and to slightly move the horizontal matchstick so that all the vertical matchsticks are aligned properly.
Let me know in the comments if you loved solving these puzzles with your kid, as I would be uploading more of them in coming weeks. If you don’t have a matchstick, you can also use plastic drinking straws ( cut them into smaller pieces ), toothpicks or thin pretzels sticks, the choices are endless. Have fun with your kids with these low cost brain teasers.
Still interested in solving more puzzles, head over to Matchstick puzzles- Changing Directions and MatchStick Puzzles – Rearranging Squares.
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For the first puzzle, I solved it by taking a matchstick away from the six and adding it to the last four, to get 5+4=9.
That is right Suzanne. There are couple of other combinations to solve this puzzle, can you also find them ?