Metacognitive math puzzles
Watch your own thinking.
Three puzzles that record how you solve — then hand the reasoning back to you.
Play a puzzle, replay your own solve, and study the reasoning that got you there.
From learners making sense of ideas to the builders who make the tools.
The three puzzles
Metadoku
Calcudoku · deduction
Fill the grid so every cage hits its target. The thinking it makes visible: constraint deduction — which clue forced which cell, and how you know the answer is the only one.
Play Metadoku →Metaplete
Delete-to-target · elimination
Delete cells so each row and column hits its target — by sum or product. The thinking it makes visible: hypothesis-testing — when you knew, when you guessed, and when you backed a choice out.
Play Metaplete →Metagons
Arithmagons · inverse
Each edge is the sum of the two circles it joins — work backward to the hidden values. The thinking it makes visible: inverse reasoning — where you entered the system and how you unwound it.
Play Metagons →Learning through play. A well-made puzzle can carry a mathematical idea — but only because a teacher chose it, set the stage, and knows exactly what to watch for. Teachers aren't needed less here; they're needed differently — as designers of the experience and readers of the thinking.
Here, students infer the rules and watch their own reasoning, while the teacher gets a replayable window into how a child actually thinks — reasoning made visible, not drill in a nicer costume.
How each one works
Infer the rules from a worked example, then solve. Every move is quietly time-stamped.
Scrub back through your own solve and attach notes at the moments that carried real reasoning.
Generate an editable, downloadable "thinking analysis" — your strategy, in your words. No data leaves the device.