Punnett Square & Mendelian Inheritance Game
A biology game to master inheritance: two parents are crossed and you must predict how the offspring will turn out. First you reason and answer; the Punnett square appears afterwards, already solved, to show you where the ratio comes from. And the other way round too: from the offspring, deduce the parents’ genotype.
Biology · Secondary, Sixth Form
Instead of memorising that Aa × Aa gives 3:1, the student derives it: each parent passes one allele, four combinations come out, and one dominant allele is enough to show. The rule stops being a fact and becomes a consequence.
The hardest case — two similar-looking parents with a different child — is a whole round type here: if a recessive appears, both parents must have been carrying that hidden allele.
Red × white giving all pink breaks the 3:1 students think is universal. Seeing that the heterozygote can be a third phenotype avoids the most typical exam mistake.
"Two purple-flowered plants (Aa × Aa) are crossed and the question is how many out of 4 will have white flowers. The student answers 1 and the square appears showing AA, Aa, Aa, aa: only the last one is white."
Prefer to learn without screens? Try this analogue version:
Draw a 2×2 grid and write one parent’s alleles on top and the other’s on the left.
Fill each cell by combining the allele of its row with the one of its column.
Count how many cells carry at least one dominant allele: those show the dominant trait.
Check: the recessive only appears when the cell has both lowercase alleles.
If you like Genetics, these activities work similar skills:
Each parent flips a coin (heads = dominant allele, tails = recessive). Repeat 20 times and compare the ratio you get with the theoretical one: 3:1 is a probability, not a guarantee.
Track a simple trait (attached or free earlobe) across three generations. Real carriers and generation skips show up.
Review the original experiment: why he chose peas, which seven traits he studied and how he reached the ratios without knowing DNA existed.
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