Rising Rows

This delightful challenge works as solitaire alone or with a small group, or as a head to head competition between groups. It rewards knowing all your multiplication facts, but anyone can play.

Solitaire: 1 – 3 players.
Competitive: 2 – 3 teams of 1 – 3 players.

We recommend Multiplication by Heart visual flash cards, but you can play with any deck of multiplication flash cards.

Every team will need a stack of nine cards, with the answers face down. Pick cards from the top and place them, one at a time, in a 3 by 3 grid. Once a card is placed, it cannot be moved.

After all nine cards are placed, turn them up to see the answers. You earn one point for each row and column that has the cards in increasing order. Whoever has the most points wins. In solitaire, a perfect game is 6 points.

Then turn them over and see how many points you earned.

You get one point for each row and column where the cards increase. I got 5 points in this game, out of 6 possible.

Variation

Play with 16 cards in a 4 by 4 square instead.