Turtle Confusion

Turtle Confusion presents 40 shape challenges to the learner that must be completed using basic Logo-blocks. The challenges are based on Barry Newell’s 1988 book, Turtle Confusion: Logo Puzzles and Riddles. Gary Stager has posted a scan of Newell’s book (with permission of the author) (en español).

Below is a collections of Turtle Blocks projects stored on the Planet that presents shape challenges to be programmed by moving the Logo turtle.


  1. Click on a challenge from the images below (or by searching for 'Challenge' on the Planet).

  2. Use blocks from the various Turtle Block palettes to instruct the Logo turtle to replicate the pattern.

  3. You can redisplay the challenge image at any time by typing "Alt-P".

Most of the challenges are problems of symmetry and geometry which typically can be solved by using a combination of rotations and repeat blocks. You may have to use the Pen Up and Pen Down blocks on occasion.

The Challenges


More project ideas

There is a Turtle Art page on Pinterest that has many ideas for Turtle Blocks projects.

Writing your own challenges

To create your own challenges, you need to use Music Blocks.

  1. Create a project in Music Blocks.

  2. Back up your project by saving it locally to the file system.

  3. Run your project.

  4. Drag all of the blocks from your project to the trash, except for one Start block.

  5. Save your project to the Planet.

  6. Open your challenge in Turtle Blocks from the Planet.

What the above steps do is create a "compiled" image of your project, which can be run without referring to the blocks used to create the project. "Compiling" is a feature of Music Blocks that is disabled in Turtle Blocks. But you can run "compiled" projects in Turtle Blocks by typing Alt-P.