This   level-5 vital article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Mathematics Mid‑priority This article is within the scope of WikiProject Mathematics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of mathematics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MathematicsWikipedia:WikiProject MathematicsTemplate:WikiProject Mathematicsmathematics articles Mid This article has been rated as Mid-priority on the project's priority scale.

Groups of Mathematical Puzzles and Problems for Recreational Mathematics

The following items can be found via Martin Gardner's books and similar sources. Many of these will have wiki-links. I will check these as convenient. The list can then be moved to an article page. JK-Salisbury 28-June-08

Magic Shapes

Magic Square;

Other Magic Shape - stars and cubes;

Bordered squares;

Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication & Division squares;

Latin square;

Graeco-Latin Euler squares;

Sudoku;

Shapes

Polyforms ie Polyominoes, Bolos, Hexes, Iamonds, Lozzes, Stix;

Lattices – square, hexagonal, triangular;

Replication;

Rep-tiles;

Tesselation & Tiling;

Penrose tiles;

Escher staircase;

Shape-fitting;

Square-packing;

Dissections – shape-to-shape;

Tree-planting;

Flyovers;

Pancake-cuts & donut-cuts;

Tangrams & Solgrams;

n-colour spots & bracelets;

Pascal’s Triangle & pyramid;

Angulation – acute, obtuse & basic;

Platonic solids;

Polyhedra;

Soma cubes;

Shape-killing;

Envelopes – curves, parabola, ellipses, spirals;

Paper-folding for curves;

Origami;

Macmahon Cubes;

Snowflakes;

Mosaics;

Packing;

On the Chessboard

Placement – 8 Queens [and other pieces]

Max-attack, min-attack, Pacific, Efficient, Inefficient;

Tours – Knights and other pieces;

Maxiwiggle, miniwiggle, max-distance, re-entrant;

Fairy Pieces;

Spud tours;

Lattice walks;

Numbers

Primes;

Amicable, Perfect, Cyclic etc;

Fermat, Mersenne, Catalan etc;

Factorials;

Alphametics;

Cryptarithms;

Numbles;

Pi;

e;

Phi (Golden Number);

0, 1, 2 and interesting numbers;

Fibonacci & Lucas sequences;

Binary, Denary, Duodecimal;

Pythagoras Figure patterns;

Diophantos;

Permutations;

Logic

Paradoxes;

Fallacies;

Probability;

Game Theory;

Newcomb’s Paradox; Prisoners' Dilemma;

Coincidence;

Boolean Algebra;

Turing Machines;

Abacus;

Codes & Ciphers;

Flatland;

Birds in Trees;

15 Puzzle;

Finger-counting;

Mental Arithmetic short-cuts;

Tournaments;

Schoolwalks – Kirkman Triples & Quadruples;

Pierce permutations;

Round-Table permutations;

Table-sitting;

Josephus Decimation;

Minimum Weights & Postage;

River-Crossing;

Railway shunting;

Desert Crossing;

Monkey & Coconuts;

Bottle Pouring;

4 colour map;

“Numerology”;

“Pyramidology”;

“Astrology”;

Modern Chaos & Fractals

Peano Curves;

Dragon Curves;

Flowsnakes;

Koch;

Minkowski;

Mandelbrot and other Fractals;

Julia Sets;

Catastrophe Theory;

Modern (trademark)

Bono’s L Game;

Rubik’s Cube;

Rubik’s variations;

Rubik’s Snake;

Rubik’s Clock;

Solitaire (English Cross & European);

Nim;

Tac-Tix;

Sprouts;

Hip;

Odds & Ends

Dice;

Cards;

Topology route-making;

Symmetry, rotations, reflections;

Moebius;

Knots;

Braids;

String figures;

Donuts;

Flexagons;

Mazes;

Chinese Rings;

Borromean Rings;

Tower of Hanoi;

Icosian Game;

Coin moving;

Match moving;

Pack shuffling;

Gem-cutting;

Juggling;

Casinos & Fairground Games;

Building Card-houses;

Patterns in Table of Elements & Sub-Atomic Particles;

Weights & Measures;

Egyptian Fractions;

Normal & Poisson Distributions in real-life;

Cricket, Golf – spin, swerve, cut, and dip;

Fortifications and lines-of-fire;

Knitting;

Stitching;

Lace-making;

Calendars;

Lightning Calculators;

Art & Music

Perspective; Anamorphic;

Minimal;

3-D models, Burrs;

Optical Illusions;

Vasarely, Riley;

Projections, maps, scales;

Fantasy Maps;

Music Notation;

Scales;

Wave-patterns;

Campanology, Bell-ringing;

Dance-choreography;

Melody machines;

Random walks;

I Ching;

Laffer curve;

Hoaxes;

Words

Crosswords;

Anagrams;

Oulipo;

Lewis Carroll ;

Interesting words;

Eleusis;

Salisbury-99 ( talk) 16:23, 24 September 2008 (UTC) reply

There are some games that propose the player an initial number, a goal number, some available operations and the amount of maximum operations. The player then needs to reach the goal number through a combination of the operations given.

For example. One has the operation "+9", "x2", "8->4" (a digit that is an 8 becomes a 4), a starting value of 0, five operations at most and a goal of 24. The solution is: "+9" (current value 9), "+9" (current value 18), "8->4" (c.v. 14), "x2" (c.v. 28), "8->4" (c.v. 24) .

How is such a game called? Pier4r ( talk) 22:19, 3 January 2023 (UTC) reply