The traditional method of pair programming involves two students who share a single computer. One student physically codes in the programming environment, the “Driver”, while the other student, the “Navigator,” gives the Driver instructions to take. When using the Puzzle method, students are able to act as Driver and Navigator roles at the same time by using a collaborative feature similar to Google Docs that allows concurrent editing of a program [1].  

More importantly,  Puzzle method ensures an even distribution of work, as the tasks of each student are determined by the partition of blocks available to them in the BBP environment. For example, in the figure to the right, we can see the partition of blocks in a programming script completed by two students using the Puzzle method.

Student A has access to control (yellow) and variable (orange) blocks. While student B has access to sensing(light blue), motion (dark blue), and operation (green) blocks. In the programming environment, students can only see blocks they have access to. This partition attempts to distribute tasks to students evenly since both students will be acting as both a Driver and a Navigator. In total, Student A contributed a total of 14 blocks and Student B contributed a total of 13 blocks.

Since students can only see blocks assigned to them, students are forced to discuss with their partner which blocks are needed to complete an activity. Thus, eliminating the possibility of the "divide and conquer" method and increasing the need for collaborative talk in order to complete an activity.

[1] Lytle, N., Milliken, A., Cateté, V., & Barnes, T. (2020, February). Investigating different assignment designs to promote collaboration in block-based environments. In Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (pp. 832-838).