Mastermind

Description

It’s a Thinking Tool in 2 variations. Bulls and Cows is the old number code game. Mastermind is the coloured pegs variation. You get the notes to cover both games and the pegs for Mastermind. You can upgrade to the full Bulls and Cows when available.

As you would expect, there are a wide range of skills that can be learned from this tool:

• order. Both order of events and order within a code are vital features of this game. Students learn to consider the possible variations and combinations.
• number skills
• competitive skills
• generalising
• systematic methodologies. Very few games or puzzles are so involved in systematic methods as these.
• trial and error. You need to start somewhere when cracking a code, but how do we do this effectively … and when can we change to a more purely systematic approach.