Long Island teachers build a fun online word game — and a fan base

David Cordeau, a math and coding teacher at Roslyn Middle School in East Hills, was convinced that the key to unlocking algebra was making it fun — that way his eighth graders could crack complex concepts and tackle tricky word problems.

That’s why Cordeau, 45, of Massapequa, came up with the digital Venn diagram-themed game Venn Ten, which uses overlapping circles to show comparisons and contrasts between two or more concepts. Players sort nine words into three categories and then are asked to come up with a word that fits all three categories to solve the puzzle.

“Instead of teaching it [algebra] the normal way this past year after winter break, I thought, ‘I’ll try some sort of word association that makes it challenging and fun,’ ” Cordeau recalled. “All of a sudden, it hit me like a bolt of lightning in the middle of the night, and I got up and wrote it down.”

The game, which offers two difficulty levels, quickly attracted a fan base. It was meant to be a one-time exercise, but the following week, kids asked where the next puzzle was, he said.

Within two months, Cordeau said, nearly 200 people — students and students’ friends and relatives — had requested the puzzle. A rising eighth grader suggested Cordeau make a website for the game instead of emailing it to students, so he could access it at high school.

Cordeau agreed, but lacked the time to build a website, so he reached out to his friend and former colleague, Eric Ruhoy, a computer science teacher at Mount Sinai High School, for help.

Ruhoy, 32, of Miller Place, instantly loved the game. 

“I knew it [the puzzle] was special, and I wanted to be part of that,” Ruhoy said. “I call him [Cordeau] the puzzle master. He wrote the puzzles, and I built the website and got it hosted.”

While Cordeau still uses the puzzle to introduce his students to word problems in algebra, he and Ruhoy also use it as an educational tool to teach coding.

“My students love it,” Ruhoy said. “When I’m teaching a lesson, and I know I’m teaching a concept that I use in the game, I can see them light up, and they see that it’s something that can be used in a real-world application.”

Since the website launched, the game, which draws on pop culture themes, has attracted a large number of daily players, Ruhoy said, “with hundreds, even thousands” of people playing in more than 20 countries.

Jessica Lombardo, 38, mathematics department chair at St. John the Baptist Diocesan High School in West Islip, where the two teachers used to work, reflected with admiration for the puzzle designed by her former colleagues.

“If you’re a good teacher you want to engage your students, and that means you have to be super creative,” said Lombardo, of Deer Park. “These two guys came together and used their creative skills to create something special to share with people.”

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