Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Puzzling Puzzle

I have always had an avid interest in solving puzzles, logical and lateral ones , this is one of my fav puzzle. Can someone find out how this is true ?


P.S: Do leave a comment or buzz me at raj.vegas@gmail.com if you think you know the answer.
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2 comments:

JD said...

Yo my friend. I think I know why it doesn't work. I'm not sure I know how to explain it though but I'll give it a try.

The difficulty arises because we are fooled into beliving that rearranging the tiles must lead to the same overall shape as we see in the first image. We're fooled because the overall shape in the second image is so similar to that of the first. We assume that as it's so similar it should be identical. But that simply isn't true since there will be many arrangements where the resulting shape will be completely different. If we started out with the first image and then posed the question...

"Rearrange the tiles to form a similar triangle with no gaps"

...the results would seem far less puzzling.

March 27, 2007 at 9:18 AM
JD said...

Hi Kabhi, It may also be interesting to note that the area defined by the base of the green triangle and the right edge of the red one in the first image, works out to 3 x 5 = 15su. Whereas in the second image the area is now defined by the base of the red triangle and the right edge of the green one, which now works out to 2 x 8 = 16 su. This explains where the gap comes from.

March 29, 2007 at 5:57 AM

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