Turing Tumble ~ A Timberdoodle Review

Is your child curious about how things work? Turing Tumble  is a way for your child to creatively take a hands on approach to the innermost parts of how a computer works. This is a bit like an introduction to digital logic, only much less intimidating. Your child will join Alia, a fictional character, and her sidekick, R.E.N. as they journey through space tackling computer challenges. Students will learn about gates, switches, bits, and binary counting. They will have to use logic and critical thinking as they build and generate their patterns in order to come up with desired outcomes for each of the 60 Challenge Puzzles included. Turing Tumble is part of the 

2019 Sixth-Grade Curriculum Kit. 

There is very minimal set-up for Turing Tumble. You must assemble the 

board and snap metal balls into ramps. Set-up took less than 15 minutes. 

Going into this ADVENTURE I will admit I was a bit nervous. My 11-year-old 

daughter had watched the video on the Timberdoodle site and said that it looked 

fun and interesting. She was a bit unsure about the story part of it. She is not 

at all into comics or Anime, and the story reminded her of both. With that said 

she was very intrigued by the puzzle part. 

My daughter was actually quite surprised! The story was not in her words, "cheesy," but 

rather quite entertaining. The story was a fun build up to the actual puzzles. 

There are 60 puzzle CHALLENGES in total. The puzzles begin easy and 

continue to become more complex. Each puzzle is entitled with a Challenge name such as; 

Erosion, Orbitals, Hard Reset, Exclusivity, and Quantum Number. Every puzzle has an Objective.

Here are a few examples:

• Make the pattern blue, blue, blue, red, red, red. 
• Add A to B and store the result of B. ( Example formulas are given)
• Create a path for blue balls to reach the output with only 6 ramps.
• Release one red ball and then all of the blue balls. 
• Encode the number of the ramp flipped to the right in register A. (Example are given)

All puzzle challenges have a starting set-up. Off to the left hand side of the page

a list is given of the available parts that the student is able to use in order to complete 

the puzzle. 

At the end of the book there is a PUZZLE SOLUTION section. I did not 

allow my daughter to check her own. I will say that there were a couple of times

 that she came up with a solution that did not match the book solution but worked. 

My daughter taking her FIRST crack at a Puzzle Challenge! 

Figuring out exactly how the ramps work and move. 

Strategizing on how to place each ramp in order to make the balls fall just how

they need to go. 

Each green ramp can be placed on the board to the left or to the right. 

My 16-year-old daughter HAD TO GET IN ON THE FUN! My 11-year-old 

had already been working on the Turing Tumble puzzles for over an hour and 

was HOOKED!! Once my 16-year-old started she too loved it. 

There was a lot of laughter and "we got it!" coming from the kitchen. They were having

so much fun. I was impressed by how fast they were able to solve the puzzles. 

Two minds are better than one!

We can solve this!

"Wait, I think we finally got it!"

Balls in ACTION for the win!!

Back hard a work. The endless cycle of lining up the blue and red balls into their

proper places.

In MOTION

"The anticipation is killing me. Is it going to work?"

Okay the Challenge is entitled: Total Internal Reflection

The Objective: Make the pattern blue, red, blue, red, blue, red...

Hmm...

Something did not go right?!?!

According to the solution in the back of the book all of the ramps are placed 

properly and in the right direction. But as you can see the outcome is not correct. 

We are completely puzzled, lol!

My daughter's response, "What, seriously, how, this doesn't make any sense?!"

We have had so much fun with Turing Tumble. I would highly recommend this fun marble powered computer board. My daughter has had so much fun working with this. I suspect that she will be spending many hours to come working her way though the Puzzle Book. Even though it is part of the 6th grade curriculum kit kiddos much older would also definitely find Turing Tumble to be both engaging and fun. Summer is not yet over! Get your kiddos off of their devices and engaged in some hands on fun! Are you looking for some fun ways to add a splash of fun into your upcoming homeschool curriculum for this next year. Turing Tumble would be a great way to get your student(s) excited about introductory digital logic. Check out all of the fun items that Timberdoodle has to offer. If you are looking for a full curriculum for your child, look no further. Timberdoodle has you covered. Maybe like my daughter, your child is going to be entering the sixth grade this year. Turing Tumble is part of the 2019 Sixth-Grade Curriculum Kit.