I would like to welcome on board my lovely new sponsor The Happy Puzzle Company, a great place to find educational games and puzzles for kids of all ages. They also organize puzzle challenge days for schools and puzzle parties for children as young as 5 through to adults. I am a firm believer in the learn through play approach so you can see why I am very excited to have found a company that provides fun challenges in one place. Lately we have been introduced to Thinktangles, a card based game for the whole family to enjoy. It consists of different shaped cards containing images, letters and numbers that are displayed in front of your eyes and 200 challenge cards that provide clues to locate the answer among the cards in play. However there is a catch, not all cards in play are eligible to contain the answer. A shape die and a colour one determine which cards are active so players need to think fast and beat their opponents to either locating the answer or establishing there is a no match. At first it might seem a little complicated but once you get going it is easy to work out a system to eliminate the cards that are not in play. The beauty about Thinktangles is that you can really adapt it to your children’s age and abilities. As it stands some of the questions require basic math skills and the ability to tell time, but it is up to you to leave out the questions that are not yet suitable for your children. You may also play the game with less cards – the full version requires 32 cards in play – or without the dice, or just with one die if you are playing with young kids. Thinktangles is a really great game to improve quick response and the ability to solve problems by elimination. We also played our own version of the game without the clue cards, where each player had to describe a secret object in the cards in play and the others had to guess. This is a fabulous exercise to develop kids’ ability to describe objects.