Teaching children thinking skills, and about me and my texts

I just rememebered a game of sinking war ships we sometimes played when I was a kid, mainly against my mom, and it maybe increased problem solving skills later, but we did not play it so often. Mostly there are just two players. Each player has a grid boxed ordinary writing or counting paper and a pen. They choose a square of a suitable size, for example 8 times 8 boxes, and a nice number of war ships fitting well to it, for example one row of five boxes, two ships of four, three ships of three boxes in a row, four ships of two and five ships of one box.  They also number the boxes by marking numbers from 1 to 8 to the side  and letters from A to H to the top so that each box is easy to refer to. Then they each secretly, without showing to the opponent, draw the ship outlines to their water area. No twio ships may be side by side but corners touching is ok. Then they try to guess where the ships of the other player are and hit them to sink the ship under the water. They ea...