Countdown Numbers Game: Maths Starter for the Classroom
The Countdown numbers game: six numbers, a target between 101 and 999, and thirty seconds. Play it yourself by pressing two tiles and an operation to make a new number, scored the way the show scores it, or put it on the board for a class and reveal the best route when the time is up. Fresh numbers every round, and no sign-up. Teachers: the menu at the top has the other starters, and Copy link for your class sends the solo version out.
Type each answer and it is marked as you go.
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Send the class this deck to play on their own, marked as they go.
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How to play the Countdown numbers game
Six numbers are drawn: up to four large ones from 25, 50, 75 and 100, and the rest from 1 to 10. A target between 101 and 999 comes up with them. Use each number at most once, with any of the four operations, to get as close to the target as you can. Every step must give a positive whole number, so a division that does not go exactly, or a subtraction that goes below one, is refused. Ten points for hitting the target, seven for finishing within five of it, five for finishing within ten.
Playing solo, press a tile, an operation and a second tile, and the result becomes a new tile you can use again. Undo takes the last step back; Done ends the round early. When the clock runs out the round is scored on the closest tile you made, and the best route the numbers allow is shown beside it.
Running it as a maths starter on the board
Switch to Projector and press Start: the numbers and the target fill the screen with the clock, the class works on paper, and when the time is up the best route is revealed a line at a time. Enter brings the next round. Three rounds of thirty seconds, with the reveals and the talk between them, is a ten-minute starter, and the answers screen at the end lists every round with its best route so the class can check their own working against it.
The best route is found by working through the combinations of the six numbers, so if the target can be reached the screen shows a way to reach it, and if it cannot, the screen says how close it is possible to get. It is the same order of operations the class is using, applied to every pairing.
The other maths starters
The menu at the top of the console groups the starters the way a teacher thinks of them: mental arithmetic (the Mental Maths Blast, the relay, this page, which is bigger, estimate it) and reasoning and puzzles (number pyramids, spot the mistake, four in a row). Every one runs solo or on the board, and nothing about anyone is stored: a personal best stays in your own browser. For a whole lesson's worth of questions on any topic, the Question Projector draws from the same engine.