Logic puzzles are a close relative of receptive drill since they make learners think about finding a solution to a problem while they are seeing an abundance of sentences showing the same pattern or patterns. Here are four examples
TRACK is a puzzle which shows a plan of a suburban railway line. You call up clues until you can place all the station names in the right places. The language focus is prepositions, at, to, from, beside, between, and compass directions, due north, further north, etc. You can choose random clues which give a wide range but where you will probably need at least twelve clues to be sure of the answer, or smart clues where the range is limited and more informative so that you will only need five or six clues. Each puzzle creates a new set of clues, so you can play it over and over again. You can also use of this version which prints out the puzzles on paper. I have created versions in several other languages which you can try out or show to students from other countries.
| French | German | Spanish | Thai |
Here you have a diary of a week's excursion and eight towns visited. Call up clues to work out the order in which the towns were visited. The language focus is on past tense verbs and adverbs of time.
SEESAW shows you a seesaw and six children. You know the weights of one, two or three of the children and have to put them on the seesaw to work out the unknown weights. The language focus is on more/less, much more/much less, etc. Here is a version in French.
Here we see a Venn diagram showing how many people shared a hobby or had something else in common. Call up clues to fill in the diagram. The language focus is on quantifiers such as all, altogether, more, fewer, some, none, most, etc.