LEGO Building Challenge for Kids: Brain Puzzles

Use your bricks to design and build LEGO Brain Teaser Puzzles!

This open-ended LEGO® building challenge is perfect for a LEGO® club, class, or group. Or even a family game night!

This post was originally published in August 2015 and updated in May 2025.

LEGO Bricks Needed for Brain Teaser Puzzles: Basic bricks and plates in any colors!

Challenge:  Build puzzle pieces that fit together to make a 10 x 10 square.  The pieces can be any shape.  

See if others can solve your puzzle.  If they solve it very quickly, change the shape of the pieces to create a more difficult puzzle!

The puzzle pieces are made out of basic bricks, with a layer of plates on top to attach them.  They’re easy to build because you can just use whatever bricks you have!

My 13 year old son built the puzzle above, and it was difficult to solve! It’s definitely easier to design the puzzles than to solve them. When you’re designing them, you can just create pieces in whatever shape you need to complete your 10 x 10 square, but starting with the pieces and figuring out where they should go is a different thing!

Also, it’s so interesting to watch how kids approach these puzzles. Some naturally try the pieces in several different positions, while others get stuck thinking that a piece should go in one particular place.  It’s a good brain exercise whether it’s something that comes naturally or not!

Here’s the solution:

If you want to build an easier puzzle, it helps to create larger pieces. Here’s a puzzle with some really interesting shaped pieces, but it wasn’t super hard for others to solve.

Here’s a picture of the completed puzzle.

If you want an easy puzzle that younger kids can solve, stick to puzzle pieces that are simple shapes like squares and rectangles.

Puzzles like this often have more than one solution!

Tips and Ideas for Extending the Learning:

• Trace around the edges of the puzzle on paper so that the person solving it can see what the completed shape should be. Or build a LEGO® frame for your puzzle.
• What other puzzle shapes can you build besides squares?
• Explore – does your puzzle have more than one possible solution?  (Be careful – what may appear to be another solution is just the same solution turned 90 degrees.)  Do all puzzles have the same number of solutions?

This project is included in the updated and expanded edition of Awesome LEGO Creations with Bricks You Already Have, along with 54 more NEW ideas!  You can order it here:  Awesome LEGO Creations with Bricks You Already Have.  The books includes step-by-step instructions and parts lists for building games, animals, robots, dragons, and more.

Need more LEGO building challenge ideas?

• Build a LEGO Mechanical Puzzle
• LEGO Engineering with Water! (Build a working water wheel)
• Build a LEGO Balance
• Build a LEGO Marble Run

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