Thirteen boxes and a lot of adding up
Yahtzee
Five dice, three rolls, and a scorecard that has to be filled whether the dice cooperate or not. The scoring is the maths, and deciding where to put a bad roll is the lesson.
- Players
- 1 or more
- Time
- 20 to 30 minutes
- Ages
- 8 and up
What you need
- Five dice
- A Yahtzee scorecard, or paper ruled into thirteen boxes
How to play
- Roll up to three times. Roll all five dice. You may set any aside and reroll the rest, up to three rolls in total.
- Fill exactly one box. At the end of your turn you must write a score into one empty box — even if that means writing zero. That obligation is the whole game.
- Score the upper section. The boxes for ones through sixes score the total of the matching dice only. Three fours scores 12 in the fours box and nothing anywhere else.
- Score the lower section. Three of a kind and four of a kind score the total of all five dice. A full house scores 25, a small straight 30, a large straight 40, and five of a kind — Yahtzee — scores 50. Chance scores the total of all five, whatever they are.
- Take the bonus. If the upper section totals 63 or more, add 35. Sixty-three is three of each number, which is worth pointing out — it makes the bonus a target rather than an accident.
- Add it all up. When all thirteen boxes are filled, total the card. Highest wins.
The maths in it
Adding five dice, thirty-odd times a game, is more arithmetic than a worksheet delivers in a week. The 63-point bonus is a genuine planning problem, and the requirement to fill a box every turn means a child has to decide which of two bad options costs less — which is a more useful skill than any of the addition.
Making it fit the child
Easier: Play the upper section only, six boxes, and skip the bonus. Let a younger child sort the dice into piles before counting.
Harder: Play with the scorecard visible to everyone and ask each player to say why they chose a box before writing it. The reasoning is where the mathematics lives.