On October 10th, VHS computer science students, along with any friends that wanted to join, gathered at the high school to participate in Puzzle Night. Students separated into groups and competed with each other by racing to solve the most puzzles for various prizes.  

The students had two hours to solve eight puzzles. Each group was placed in their own room and had to work solely with the members of their group to solve the puzzles.  

Puzzle Night is based on a Harvard University activity called Puzzle Day. Computer science students taking CS50 at Harvard are given puzzles to complete and then these puzzles are given to AP computer science teachers to challenge their students. Computer Science Principles teacher, Danielle Mutovic, decided her students were up for the challenge.

The students had fun solving the puzzles, but also found the puzzles very difficult. “The puzzles were very hard and required knowledge from history to pop culture. We really needed to think outside of the box,” says senior Emma Yee.

Mrs. Mutovic recounts the fun, but equally frustrating moments of the night:

“Throughout the night, there were screams and groans throughout the hallways. When a group solved a puzzle, it was obvious and other groups were determined to keep going and get as many as they could to try and beat the team next door.”

She explains the purpose of puzzle night is to “help foster computational and logical thinking without necessarily coding on a computer”. The students were able to advance their computer science skills in an unconventional and fun way.

Kiera Egan, Ethan Forrest, Sean Carney, Stephanie Boyle, and David Navarro conquered the most amount of puzzles and won the competition. “My group solved 2/8 of them and we won, because the other puzzles were really complicated” says junior Kiera Egan. Despite the difficulty she and her group had solving the puzzles, she “would definitely go again”.

The high school students had a great time challenging their brains at Puzzle Night. Mutovic and the students who attended hop to have another puzzle night soon,so if you missed this one, be on the lookout for the event.