Friday Afternoon Lifesavers – the Teacher’s Best Friend; Part 4, A Knight’s Tour

Friday Afternoon Lifesavers are exactly what they sound like: at the end of the week when you and your students are running out of gas, these activities come to the rescue. They are mathematical, engaging, fun, and give the teacher a much-needed break.

A Knight’s Tour is a motivating activity/puzzle that works with both over and under achievers, promotes critical thinking and strategy, and is a great introduction to chess. It has multiple solutions, is self-assessing, and can be extended to an 8×8 grid involving magic squares.

A knight on a chessboard moves in a unique fashion.  It must move two squares in one direction, then one square in a right angle direction.  The graphic above shows some examples of knight moves.  A knight can move from the square marked with the horse to any of the squares with an “X”. A Knight’s Tour is a series of moves by a knight that visits each square of a chessboard exactly once.

Here is Level 1 of the Knight’s Tour challenge: How can a knight in the lower left hand corner of a 5×5 grid visit each square exactly once? The knight may not revisit a square. There are several different solutions. What helps students with this puzzle is having them number the squares as they visit them. In other words, the lower left hand corner square is numbered 1, then the next square visited is numbered 2, and so on. Here is a sample grid to work with:

Click here for a popup window showing the Knight’s Tour Solution

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Related posts:

1. Friday Afternoon Lifesavers – Math Videos from Bill Lombard – ppt
2. Magic Square Products – a New Twist on an Old Puzzle Pretzel