The British Council’s Learn English site has a fun little mathematics game that I just learned about from Jen Deyenberg. Magic Gopher is a fun little game in which students select a two digit number, add the digits together, subtract the new number from the original, then look up a symbol associated with the final number. The Magic Gopher the correctly “guesses” the final number symbol. Of course it’s not actually magic, but young students will think it is.

Applications for Education
Magic Gopher could be a fun little way to get students thinking about the “magic” of mathematics. Allow them to struggle with the challenge of figuring out how the gopher gets it right every time then explain it.