Sometimes (often), preparing lessons is playing around and being creative. I could have been doing more useful things I’m sure, but making this Tarsia puzzle was just a bit of fun.
It started with a tweet by @Shawtimesmiles and @misterwootube about a Maths puzzle:
I really liked the look of this puzzle and then I learnt from another Maths teacher (shout out to Mr Pearson) that these puzzles are called Tarsia or Tarzia puzzles. It has clearly been around for a very long time, and I’m late to this game, but excited none the less to discover something that is new to ME.
There is a great bit of free software here which puts the puzzle together for you: http://www.mmlsoft.com/index.php/products/tarsia. (Available since 2012…. yup, I am late to the game!) It’s made for Maths, but you can also input short text. The one thing I have not discovered yet is how to insert spaces in between the words, so it doesn’t really look that good, but it works.
I made this trial puzzle for 16 key dates of the French Revolution between 1774 – 1789 (AoS1 in VCE History):
- Tarsia puzzles in Geography
- I found a few other Tarsia files here
- Actually, it seems Tarsia puzzles were a secret kept hidden from me, a quick Google search will get some great results, although quite a few seem to be behind paywalls (I’m looking at you Teachers Pay Teachers)