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For grown-ups

Make-Ten Pyramid is a card game for practising number bonds: pairs of numbers that make 10, like 7 and 3 or 6 and 4. Your child taps two cards that add up to the target and both cards go. A 10 can go on its own. Start with Make 5, then Make 10. Any right pair will usually clear those. The big pyramid is a planning puzzle: there, a right pair can still leave a card stuck, so it asks your child to look ahead (Undo is always there).

Every pyramid the game deals can be cleared. A computer checks each deal before your child sees it. A row of face-up helper cards is always ready to use. A wrong pair only shows what it adds up to, and there is no limit on undo. If your child is stuck, “Show me a pair” makes the matching cards glow and Tenley the owl says why. Your child still makes the move.

Try it with real cards: take out the picture cards, deal a small triangle, lay a few more cards face up beside it as helpers, and look for pairs that make 10 together.

There is no score, no streak and no timer, just a count of pyramids cleared, kept on this device. Nothing about your child leaves the device.

What it never does

  • No accounts, no ads, no tracking: anything kept stays on this device.
  • No streaks, timers to beat, points to chase or leaderboards.
  • No chat, and nothing anyone types is sent anywhere.

We describe what Make-Ten Pyramid is designed to practise. We do not claim it raises test scores.

Where this game comes from

Pyramid patience

Pyramid is a patience game of the “Simple Addition” family: the cards are dealt in a triangle, and you take away pairs that add up to 13 (a king, worth 13, goes alone). It is printed as a standard game in modern rule books such as Hoyle’s.

One thing to hold: The triangle of 28 cards. Each card is half covered by the two cards in the row below it, so you can only take a card once both of those are gone.

Why it matters: Every move is a sum. You look for pairs that make 13 and plan which pair to take first so that you do not bury the card you need.

What we don’t know: Nobody knows who first dealt it, when, or how it got its rules; the books we checked do not say.

Sources: “Pyramid”, in Philip D. Morehead (ed.), Hoyle’s Rules of Games, 3rd ed. (2001), p. 207 · “Pyramid”, in The Diagram Group, Little Giant Encyclopedia of Games for One or Two (1998), p. 134

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