Hooda Math's What Do We Do Now — A Practical Guide
Hooda Math is an older educational gaming site that's been around since the early 2010s. It's mostly aimed at elementary and middle school students learning math concepts through interactive games. What Do We Do Now is one of their logic puzzle games. I've played it, watched kids play it, and tried to figure out why it bugs out sometimes. This guide covers what it is, how to access it, and a few things you might run into. The game works like a basic pathfinding or flow puzzle. You're given a grid with a start point and an end point, sometimes with obstacles or intermediate targets. Your job is to figure out the correct sequence of moves, rotations, or connections to get from the beginning to the finish. It's essentially a logic maze dressed up with a simple interface. The difficulty scales as you progress through levels, introducing new mechanics like one-way paths, moving obstacles, or multiple endpoints. I used to run into a problem where certain levels wouldn't save progress if you closed the browser tab. The game stores your state in localStorage, and depending on the browser or an ad-blocker setup, that can get wiped. I worked around it by taking a screenshot of the level layout and noting the step count before closing anything. It's not ideal, but it lets you come back and pick up where you left off without restarting from level one.
Another thing nobody seems to mention: some levels have more than one valid solution path, but the game only registers one of them as correct. This is because the puzzle was coded with a single expected sequence rather than checking for logical equivalence. So if you solve it "correctly" using a different approach, the game might tell you you're wrong. The workaround is just to replay the level and match the same move order the designer intended, even if it feels unnecessarily specific. I spent about ten minutes on one level once because I took the logically sound but unregistered route. Frustrating, but there it is.
How to Play and Access the Game
You don't need to download anything. Hooda Math runs entirely in the browser. Just go to the Hooda Math website and search for What Do We Do Now in their game catalog. It's free, no account required. Some schools block the site, which is worth knowing if you're trying to use it for classroom purposes. The controls are straightforward. Click and drag to draw paths, rotate pieces by clicking them, or select options from menus depending on the level variant. The timer in the corner is mostly cosmetic — it tracks how long you take but doesn't penalize you for slow play. If you get stuck, there's no built-in hint system, which is by design. The game expects you to work through the logic yourself. I'd recommend playing through the first five levels slowly to understand the different mechanics being introduced. Each level typically adds one new rule or constraint, so the early ones are basically tutorial content in disguise. Once you hit level six or so, the puzzles start combining previous mechanics, and that's when you really need to pay attention to how the rules interact.
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Common Pitfalls
The biggest issue players face is overcomplicating the solution. These puzzles aren't designed to be difficult in a clever way — they're designed to test whether you can follow a logical sequence. When people get stuck, it's usually because they're looking for a trick or a shortcut that isn't there. The answer is almost always the most direct path through the constraints given. Another problem is ignoring the order of operations within the puzzle. Some levels require you to unlock a path before you can use it, and if you try to use a blocked path first, you'll waste moves and get confused about why the puzzle won't resolve. Pay attention to which elements change state and in what order. If you're having trouble with the game loading or graphics not rendering, it's likely a browser compatibility issue. Hooda Math was built for older browsers and hasn't been updated much. Chrome and Firefox generally work fine, but Safari and some mobile browsers can be problematic. Using Chrome in desktop mode on a phone usually resolves the rendering issues.
When It Doesn't Work
Be honest about the limitations here. The game is outdated, the interface is clunky, and the puzzle design is inconsistent. Some levels feel arbitrarily hard while others are trivially easy. The difficulty curve isn't smooth, and there's no way to adjust it. If a student is genuinely struggling, moving on to a different platform might be more productive. Khan Academy or similar resources offer better structured math practice with clearer progression systems. What Do We Do Now can be a useful warm-up or a quick logic exercise, but it shouldn't be the primary tool for teaching problem-solving skills. The puzzle variety is limited, and after finishing all the available levels, there's not a lot to come back to. I'd suggest using it as a supplement rather than a main resource.
