3–6 · PUZZLES
Puzzles
Crack secret codes, solve riddles, and untangle logic grids from the Golden Age of Piracy. Short rounds, big “aha!” moments.
Play puzzlesNEWSCHOOLWORKS
The arcade is the playground. The school is the campus.
Every game here is built from a real newSchoolWorks lesson. Explore the courses behind the games.
THE SCHOOL ARCADE
Play your way through history.
Crack pirate codes, argue at the Convention, and fork the timeline — games built from real newSchoolWorks lessons that grow harder as you climb the grades.
7–8 · SIMULATIONS
Simulations
Step into a delegate’s shoes at the Convention: make claims, weigh evidence, argue your side, and vote like history depends on it.
Play simulations9–12 · MULTIVERSE
Multiverse
Fork history at one crucial decision, watch the consequences ripple, then defend your timeline against every what-if.
THE COMPLEXITY RAMP
Games that grow with you
- Puzzles (grades 3–6): crack codes and spot clues — decode a cipher, riddle out the Jolly Roger, divide the treasure fairly.
- Simulations (grades 7–8): step into a delegate’s shoes and argue — claims, counterclaims, evidence, and a vote.
- Multiverse (grades 9–12): fork history and defend your timeline — change one decision and own what follows.
WAVE 2 · NEW GAMES
More games
3–6 · SCIENCE
The Field Station
Read the evidence left behind — rock layers, weather logs, sky plates — and infer what happened. Then defend your conclusion like a scientist.
Play Field Station3–6 · TECHNOLOGY
The Instrument Vault
Every science begins with an instrument. Pick the right tool, estimate before you measure, and spot the reading that cannot be trusted.
Play Instrument Vault7–8 · SIMULATION
Build Upward
Raise a skyscraper in 1870s Chicago or New York. Balance the engineering dial against the profit dial — and survive the wind.
Play Build Upward9–12 · ECONOMICS
The Incentive Game
Set the fines, bounties and rules; watch people respond. Second-order effects bite. The sharpest game in the arcade.
WAVE 3 · NEW GAMES
3–6 · SCIENCE
The Mixing Bench
Bench or poster? Before or after? Mixture or not? Eight chemistry puzzles from the days when an element was something you could hold.
7–8 · SIMULATION
Draw the Lines
Whoever draws the map chooses the voters. Paint five districts on a 25-voter grid and watch the seats split from the votes.
Play Draw the Lines9–12 · MULTIVERSE
Fork the Century
1929, 1933, 1941, 1964: four forks in the American Century. Change one decision — then defend who shares the power.
Play Fork the Century7–8 · DEBATE
Take the Other Side
The Goldilocks zone says a planet should be wet. Your job: argue the other side — with evidence, like a scientist.
WAVE 4 · THE STEM WING
The Laboratory & the Sky
The museum's real science walls, turned into games. Finish a game to light its wall — and meet your scientist self at the exit.
7–8 · DEBATE
Fork the Lab
Four great debates from the Earth-and-Sky drawers — crater counts, first light, star-forges, rocky ledgers. Pick a side; both sides are honored.
3–6 · GUESSING
Name the Instrument
Six mystery instruments from the lab's own cabinet. Guess what each one measures — the flip-card reveal is always a gift, never a grade.
3–6 · 7–8 · METHOD
Predict the Reaction
Observe, predict, reveal — the scientific method by doing it, on the chemistry bench. Curiosity is the win; there is no wrong prediction.
3–6 · SEEKING
Spot the Signal
Zoom into real Moon photography — highlands, meteor craters, a ring lake — and find the signal hiding in the noise. No timer, just looking.
WAVE 5 · THE WORD WORKSHOP
Words at play
Primary English, gamified for grades 3–6: collect words hiding in the lesson titles, stretch tiny sentences until they sing, climb story mountains, and hunt verbs in the hall claims.
3–6 · FLASHCARDS
The Word Collector
Build your own deck from words in the lesson titles — wager, pursuit, claim, detail, inference, evidence. Flip, quiz, shuffle, then duel: which word carries more?
3–6 · SENTENCE PLAY
Stretch the Sentence
EN3's “Stretch it”: take a tiny sentence and grow it with who, where, when, why and how cards — then read it aloud to the room.
Play Stretch the Sentence3–6 · STORY STRUCTURE
Story Mountain
Place the eight real lesson titles of “Eighty Days” and “The Holmes Method” on the mountain: beginning, climb, problem peak, descent, ending.
Play Story Mountain3–6 · WORD HUNT
Verb Hunt
EN3's “Verb hunt”: find the verbs hiding in the hall claims and the exhibit-story focus lines. Tap a word — if it acts, it lights up.
WAVE 6 · THE MARKET & THE CITY
Markets, maps, and skylines
Economics and urban studies, gamified: run a market stall, share a pond, trace two life paths on the real quintile data, zone a city by the rent curve, push a skyline up or out, ride a practice ticker through boom and bust, and replay one village under four economic rule-sets.
3–6 · MARKET SIM
Market Day
Run a practice stall across five market days — weather and crowds shift, you set the price. Clear the goods and you read the crowd.
7–8 · SIMULATION
The Commons
A shared pond, six rounds, no rules — then vote a take-limit and replay. Watch what the institution changes.
9–12 · SIMULATION
Life Chances
Two paths through school, first job, mid-career, and later life on the real quintile data. See how small advantages compound — then decide which ruler you trust.
9–12 · LAND MARKET
Bid-Rent
Call the winning bid ring by ring, then zone the grid: shops, homes, factories. Nobody assigns the map — prices sort it.
9–12 · MULTIVERSE
The Vertical Push
Five toggles — land price, transit, elevators, zoning caps, demand — and the skyline rises or sprawls. What drives a city to build up, not out?
9–12 · MARKET SIM
Boom and Bust
A practice ticker across boom and crash: price discovery, speculation vs. investment, incentives. Read the fundamentals — 1929 is the bookend.
9–12 · SYSTEMS SIM
Four Economies
One village, four rule-sets: mercantilist, market, planned, communal. Every choice shows its cost — every system pays for what it chooses.
GAME 32 · BIG HISTORY
Deep time, playable
Big History drawers, gamified: the claims are the curriculum's, quoted verbatim — the game is how you prove you can carry them.
7–12 · SCIENCE · GAME 32
Keep the Fire
Someone had to stay with the coals. Tend the fire keeper's chain, split the 100-unit resting budget between ape and keeper, and stand behind a verdict — from drawer 334's real objects. Play/Assess toggle included.
ESCAPE THE GALLERY · PILOT
Locked in. Puzzle out.
A docent locks you in the gallery. The puzzles are real — from the school's drawers. Solve every lock together and the door opens. Present-mode and read-aloud included for docent-led play.
3–6 · ESCAPE ROOM · PILOT
Escape the Gallery: The Locked Hold
Wolfgang Becker — pirate-corps docent, a fictional character — has locked the hold with six locks. Crack the cipher, the riddle, the vote, the shares, the words, and the map: every puzzle from drawer 11's real pirate puzzle chest. Now with a Play/Assess toggle — Assess mode scores every lock and queues the result.
EXAMINATION · NOT A GAME
No locks. No timer. A judgment.
Some galleries aren't escaped — they're faced. Assemble the record, keep the victims central, and stand before the evaluator. Opt-in, upper bands only, no score by design.
9–12 · EXAMINATION · OPT-IN
The Panel: An Examination under Hannah Arendt
Josef Mengele appears in the Black Modern gallery only to be examined — never to teach. Under Arendt, the evaluator, reconstruct the record of what was done, how justice was evaded, and face the judgment. Records quoted verbatim from the museum docent API.
ASSESSMENTS · PLAY / ASSESS
The same game, scored.
Every arcade game now carries a Play/Assess toggle. Play to explore; Assess to be scored — attempts recorded, no coaching, results queued for the school record. Below, the school's real assessments as a lightning round: the grader bot scores short answers first, and your teacher only steps in when the bot isn't confident.
7–12 · ASSESSMENT · GAME 31
Lightning Round
The school's real assessments, played fast. Objective questions as a streak round; short answers queued for the grader bot. Runs on live assessment metadata — and on the real question sets the moment the school publishes them.
WAVE 5 · NEW FORMATS
9–12 · MYSTERY
The Case Files
Three historical mysteries: how one assassination became a world war, whether pirates were democrats or criminals, and whether war made the 1918 pandemic. Examine the evidence one piece at a time, commit to a hypothesis, deliver your verdict.
7–8 · CIVILIZATION
Foundations
Six eras, one settlement. From the first fire to the first bronze, every era hands you the hall's own question — and your answer moves Food, People, and Order toward one of four endings.
9–12 · MULTIVERSE
Fork the Republic
Four counterfactual forks of the American republic: no French alliance, a different Great Compromise, a failed expedition, no political parties. Three dials, three endings, your timeline against the real one.
7–8 · SCENARIO
The Price Is a Message
Run a supply post through three price shocks — the tin shortage, the 1973 gas queue, the unpriced good — then found a city at one of six hearths. Watch stock, coin, and trust move with every call.
7–8 · ROLEPLAY
Take the Role
Sign the pirate articles at Nassau in 1718, or cross the Rockies as captain, interpreter, or host nation. Make the call in-role, then face the documents in the debrief.
WAVE 4 · NEW GAMES
3–6 · MATH
The Number Line
Fourteen puzzles from the number line drawer set — frogs and jumps, fractions with new names, sliding decimals, ratios that must hold, the floor below…
Play The Number Line6–8 · MATH
The Proof Room
Eight puzzles from the proof room — break a famous claim, give a reason instead of an example, fill the missing step, and argue area without the formu…
Play The Proof Room3–6 · MATH
The Data Desk
Six puzzles from the data desk — read the column, mind the blank box, pick the right middle, and know which archer's sight is worth adjusting. Bean lo…
3–6 · MATH
Measure and Map
Six puzzles from measure and map — trust the right ruler, read the margin on a scale, walk the scale bar, and catch the map that hides its people.…
3–6 · SCIENCE
Force, Field and Light
Three bench puzzles from the physics drawers — sort the bounce from the bend, sort the machine's trades from its cheats, and sequence the magnet inves…
3–6 · SCIENCE
The Living World
Five bench puzzles from the living-world drawers — sequence a field observation, sort the anatomy bench, focus the microscope, sort bird evidence, and…
Play The Living World3–6 · SCIENCE
The Method Bench
Four puzzles about how science is done — sort weather from climate, order the safety protocol, order an investigation, and sequence an algorithm until…
9–12 · SOCIAL SCIENCE
How We Got It Wrong
Six famous failures of knowing — the Edsel, the Digest poll, urban renewal, the population bomb, New Coke, and Galloping Gertie. Put every story in or…
9–12 · SOCIAL SCIENCE
The Instruments
Seven puzzles about the instruments that count society — the census box, the survey question, the unemployment rate, the map, the poverty line, the av…
9–12 · SOCIAL SCIENCE
The Experiments
Five puzzles about experiments on people — Hawthorne's lights, thirteen dry years, a lottery that took a generation, the obedience studies, and the mi…