Transum Software

Towers

Create towers of heights determined by the numbers at the edges telling you how many towers you would see from that point.

  Menu   Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5 Level 6 Level 7   More  

Tap a square to build a tower on it. Tap it again to make that tower one storey taller, and keep tapping to come back round to an empty square.

Instructions

Imagine looking down on a city from above. Every square of this 6 by 6 grid has a tower standing on it, and the towers are all different heights: 1 storey, 2 storeys, and so on up to 6 storeys. Your job is to work out how tall every single one of them is.

See it for yourself. Tap any clue number and the picture beside the grid swings round to look straight along that line, fading out everything else, so you can count the towers with your own eyes. Drag the picture to walk round the city and look at it from any angle.

Where to begin

Using the grid

Every puzzle you are given has exactly one answer, and you never have to guess your way to it — although Level 7 will certainly make you think.

Where this puzzle comes from

This activity is based on the puzzle Towers from Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection, and uses a version of Simon's puzzle-generating and puzzle-solving logic, rewritten in jQuery for Transum. The original software is copyright © 2004–2024 Simon Tatham and is used, with thanks, under the terms of its MIT licence. The puzzle is also known elsewhere as Skyscrapers.

What next?

There's a rather large number of puzzles waiting for you on the Transum website and the best place to start, surprisingly, is the Puzzles Page.

Transum.org

This web site contains over a thousand free mathematical activities for teachers and pupils. Click here to go to the main page which links to all of the resources available.

Please contact me if you have any suggestions or questions.

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Mathematicians are not the people who find Maths easy; they are the people who enjoy how mystifying, puzzling and hard it is. Are you a mathematician?

Comment recorded on the 26 March 'Starter of the Day' page by Julie Reakes, The English College, Dubai:

"It's great to have a starter that's timed and focuses the attention of everyone fully. I told them in advance I would do 10 then record their percentages."

Comment recorded on the 11 January 'Starter of the Day' page by S Johnson, The King John School:

"We recently had an afternoon on accelerated learning.This linked really well and prompted a discussion about learning styles and short term memory."

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Go Maths

Learning and understanding Mathematics, at every level, requires learner engagement. Mathematics is not a spectator sport. Sometimes traditional teaching fails to actively involve students. One way to address the problem is through the use of interactive activities and this web site provides many of those. The Go Maths main page links to more activities designed for students in upper Secondary/High school.

Teachers

If you found this activity useful don't forget to record it in your scheme of work or learning management system. The short URL, ready to be copied and pasted, is as follows:

Alternatively, if you use Google Classroom, all you have to do is click on the green icon below in order to add this activity to one of your classes.

It may be worth remembering that if Transum.org should go offline for whatever reason, there are mirror site at Transum.info that contains most of the resources that are available here on Transum.org.

When planning to use technology in your lesson always have a plan B!

Do you have any comments? It is always useful to receive feedback and helps make this free resource even more useful for those learning Mathematics anywhere in the world. Click here to enter your comments.

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Scan the QR code below to visit the online version of this activity.

This is a QR Code

https://www.Transum.org/go/?Num=122

Description of Levels

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Level 1 - 4 by 4 grid, Easy

Level 2 - 5 by 5 grid, Easy

Level 3 - 5 by 5 grid, Hard

Level 4 - 6 by 6 grid, Easy

Level 5 - 6 by 6 grid, Hard

Level 6 - 6 by 6 grid, Extreme

Level 7 - 6 by 6 grid, Unreasonable

More on this topic including lesson Starters, visual aids, investigations and self-marking exercises.

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