Pythagoras Code Breaker GCSE Maths Puzzle

A Pythagoras code breaker: thirteen diagrams, each answer to 1 decimal place unlocks a letter, and the thirteen letters unscramble to an ancient wonder in Egypt. One page, full answers included.

Four questions find the hypotenuse and four find a shorter side. Then the hypotenuse lies along the bottom, and the last three hide the right-angled triangle inside a rectangle or an isosceles triangle.

The code box includes the answers students get if they add the squares when they should subtract, or the other way round, so a common mistake still unlocks a letter and the final word won’t work.

Answers are included as a separate file. One puzzle per A4 page.

Suitable for GCSE Foundation and Higher (AQA G20) and for Key Stage 3 classes working on Pythagoras’ theorem, as a lesson activity, homework or revision.

AI was used to help create this resource, working from my own lesson design.