The impact of distractors in programming completion puzzles on novice programmers position statement

Our previous work has demonstrated that programming completion puzzles enable novice programmers to acquire new programming skills [1]. As shown in Fig. 1, programming completion puzzles ask users to reassemble a block-based program's statements into the correct order. Users use the available blocks in the puzzle statement bin (Fig. 1-A) and place them into the correct order in the puzzle workspace (Fig. 1-B). In our previous work we only included blocks that were part of the actual puzzle's solution [1]. However other puzzle-like programming systems often include distractor statements as part of the user's experience [2]. In the context of programming puzzles, distractors are extra blocks or statements that are not part of a puzzle's solution. We wondered what impact distractor statements might have in programming completion puzzles on novice programmers? Do distractors also help facilitate learning programming skills when used in programming completion puzzles?