By Phil Spalding

cambolc.co.uk,  LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook,

A trip to the Digital Schoolhouse Playful Computing Conference 2025 at the University of Westminster in Harrow (link), led to me meeting a passionate and engaging mathematician with an aspiration to make learning maths fun. Dr Shohreh Blank has a vision of the gamification of Maths with her website and app Star Numbers. Over the last few weeks I have spent an engaging weekly Google Meet with Shohreh and it has been fascinating discussing and consulting on the process of developing the delivery to learners, parents, schools and after school education providers. It has been a long term project as indicated by the website and testimonials.

As a teacher of Science, Computing Science and Maths I believe this to be a valuable tool. Educators in America have viewed and seen the materials from CZeus puzzles. The following excerpt from the website (link)

“What are cZeus Puzzles?

cZeus Puzzles are unique, grid-based maths challenges boosting numeracy, logic, and problem-solving. They simplify complex mathematical relationships (like simultaneous non-linear algebraic equations) into a grid format. Players find unknown “Mystery Numbers” using given clues (sums/products) and four puzzle rules, without formal algebra. Key rules: unknown numbers are whole numbers from 1-9 (can repeat), and each puzzle has only one solution. More rules are introduced in the cZeus Planet and the cZeus School League. ” From TGML Schools’ website (contact).

I look forward to collaborating further with Shohreh and her team and spreading the word about how gamification of maths is happening!