How to play
Stack four differently sized plates (or coins) in order of size, with the largest on the bottom and the smallest on top, and imagine a rod through the centre (see diagram). Picture two other rods next to the stack. Your task is to move the tower to the third rod, arranged in exactly the same order. The catch is that you can only move one plate at a time, and you are not allowed to place a larger plate on top of a smaller one. Each player has 7 minutes to solve the problem.
How to score
Your score is the number of moves it takes to solve the problem. Any player who fails to solve the puzzle scores zero. There鈥檚 a bonus point for solving the problem in 15 moves, the minimum possible.
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Who should win?
The Tower of Hanoi is an ancient mathematical puzzle which, from the 1970s onwards, was co-opted by cognitive psychologists to measure forward-planning ability. This is a skill that taxes the brain鈥檚 frontal lobes which, in adolescence, are still developing. comparing children, teenagers and adults have shown that planning ability steadily increases in line with the increasing activity seen in their frontal lobes as people age. So in theory, the adults should outperform the teens.
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This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淭he great family brain-off鈥�
