01-18-2021, Monday
Chinese Version

My daughter doesn’t like using gift cards as gifts. Her explanation is :”Using gift cards is too boring.”

However, before for Christmas in 2020, my daughter suddenly announced to me: “I am going to give Carey’s twins gift cards as Christmas gifts. I will put the code of the gift card into a logic puzzle and the code will be revealed only after solving the logic puzzle. Sounds interesting, right?”

And so my daughter manually made the logic puzzles by putting the code one by one into the puzzles, it was time consuming and hard. She made five logic puzzles (one of which was a demo) for the twins, and asked her brother and I to do quality assurance for the puzzles. One of the puzzles which I could not solve even after spending a long time on it was quickly solved by my son, thus returning the correct gift card code.

For Christmas in 2020, My daughter gave her classmate Carey’s 9-year-old twin daughter and son the gift cards for their favorite online game. The actual Christmas gifts were a few pages of logic puzzles which contained the code for the gift cards.

Rachel, Carey’s wife, helped the twins solve their puzzles.

A few pages of paper with logic puzzles printed on them as a gift, created unusual memories for the gift recipient and their family while they worked to resolve the puzzles, while also allowing the gift giver and their family to work together to QA the puzzles. The stories embedded in the puzzles, which were created to meet the interests of the gift recipient, created additional warm feelings.

It seems pages of paper with logic puzzles printed on them as a gift possessed the power to extend the joy of gift-giving, it is indeed a fun and unique gift format.

In January 2021, my daughter made another logic puzzle which contained the code for another gift card. Again, my son and I verified her puzzle. This puzzle is a birthday gift for Lou, her friend Grace’s husband. The puzzle was created using cats as the puzzle characters, because Lou loves pets.

The night before his birthday, Lou made a set of delicious dishes. The well-made dishes brought a much praise and laughters among friends, to which Lou joked: “Yes, I will make a restaurant start-up. The only thing missing is the delivery guy.”

When the news of Lou having successfully solved the puzzle came out, my daughter said someone else joked: “I am more confident about Lou’s startup now.”

The Origins of the Logic Puzzle Game

In Halloween 2020, my son told me he started to play a new game, called logic puzzle. He also showed me how he play it on Discard a few times. Afterwards I started to play it too.

My son played the advance puzzle and I played the beginner’s version. I never thought about competing with my son, because I knew he is much better than me when it comes to playing games .

In December 2020, I showed my daughter this game, and she liked it too. She also explained to me a few questions I had for the puzzle. From this incident, I felt on-line lessons are not as effective as face to face lessons, especially when learning brand new knowledge.

Because my daughter started playing the puzzle game later than me, I thought I might have the chance to beat her. One night, I played this puzzle game until 1:30AM, but I still could not beat my daughter.

Now, my son plays the advanced version of logic puzzle, my daughter plays the standard version, and I play easy version. We all enjoy the logic puzzle, just like we enjoy playing Pokemon Go

The logic puzzle game is a one person game and we enjoy sharing our personal high scores too. A few days ago, my daughter happily told me: “I reached the fast percentile for the first time.” I congratulated her. Last Tuesday, my son shared a screenshot where he reached fast again. My daughter and I congratulated him immediately. I like to share when I reached average, because average is a good score for me (I usually score slow) .

While playing the logic puzzle game, my daughter came up with a new application: using a specific logic puzzle to hide a code for a gift card.

My daughter found an interesting usage for logic puzzle game which made me think that learning languages seems to expand one’s mindset.

Little Episodes

Chef Lou’s delicious dishes

Lou’s birthday gift, the logic puzzle game created by my daughter.

My son shared the screenshot of his good score on logic puzzle game:

The look and feel of the advanced logic puzzle game my son plays:

The night I worked hard and tried to beat my daughter on logic puzzle game:

Overnight working: I have not worked overnight for many years. Last night I played a logic puzzle game until 1:30 AM. But even after a few dozen rounds of playing, my best score is still average. This morning, I went out to play Pokemon Go, Princess Kara was tired at home in my stead.