Roughly 55 Newtown High School students recently took part in the school’s version of CS50x Puzzle Day, which challenges students to work in small groups to solve computer science-like puzzles.

NHS students first participated in CS50x Puzzle Day in 2017. As NHS computer science teacher Kristin Violette explained to participating students on December 11, the event was inspired by the CS50x Puzzle Day held at Yale University and Harvard University. With a delayed start to the school day on December 11 due to weather, Ms Violette swiftly told the roughly 30 students participating that day to help themselves to pizza before exercises began. More students participated on a different day.

“In honor of Computer Science Week, we like to switch it up,” said Ms Violette before showing the gathered students from different classes a video explaining CS50x Puzzle Day.

The video, which is available to watch online at cs50.github.io/puzzles, explains at Harvard the CS50x Puzzle Day challenges students to solve a packet of puzzles in teams, and an online version of that event is open to the world. No computer programming or computer science experience is required to solve the puzzles, according to the video. The event is inspired by a computer science class at Harvard.

“What you have here is a packet of puzzles and you can work in a group of one, two, or three,” Ms Violette said holding up one packet as an example. “... These puzzles are not easy.”

Ms Violette explained each puzzle’s answer was a word and many of the questions rely on numbers to figure out the word.

“I will give you clues once you choose which puzzle you want,” she added.

One puzzle, she described, relied on understanding maps while another was about money. One puzzle was about movies.

Nicole Sambuco, an intern substitute and student teacher from Sacred Heart University who is studying history and substitute teaching for Business Education Applied Tech Department Chair Erik Holst-Grubbe, said lessons like CS50x Puzzle Day build team skills and prepare students for tasks they will be asked to complete as adults.

“I think it is great. I think that having the kids do something different and unconventional like this will really get their brains to critically think, which I think is really important,” Ms Sambuco said.

NHS students also took part in Hour of Code activities in participating classes as part of Computer Science Week, according to Ms Violette. Students volunteered to visit classrooms to be code ambassadors who oversaw other students completing an hour of working on code.