You should check out Norvig's design of computer programs course on Udacity (https://www.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--cs212 https://www.udaci

You should check out Norvig's design of computer programs course on Udacity (https://www.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--cs212 https://www.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--...) where he uses these kinds of puzzle programs to teach programming design concepts. It is a hard but really rewarding course.