Tough geometric brain teaser

BB pal and former guestblogger Bruce Stewart sent along this slippery little geometry brain teaser. Click the image to see it larger.

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Anonymous

33 was right.
Jesse in Japan

That’s easy. The dark green triangle has a slightly different angle from the red one. You can see it in how much it cuts into the squares above it.
cwoehrl

#7 Z7Q2: nice excuse, plus remembering your comment helped me find this post again – search bb for “hypotenuse” :-)
jonjonz

Nice example of how logic sometimes leads people astray. Yes the upper diagonal is the same, but just count the lenght of the segments horizontally. It is 13 segments long.

The red part is 8 segments long next to the green part which is 5 segments long, total length 13 segments.

Since the bottom image starts with the green triangle that is only 5 segments long horizontally, s0 we neede 8 more segments to complete the horizontal.

Makes perfect sense to me.
nehpetsE

The sad part is i was actually examining the pixels.
gHurley

Is this similar to Sam Loyd’s “Get off the Earth” puzzle.
echonomist

Witchcraft is the only rational solution! David Pescovitz is a witch! Burn the witch! Or, if you are a Pythagorean, off the boat!
doomslang

What the hell. Am I the only one out of 50-something commenters to notice that the grid itself is completely messed up within the colored shapes and that’s where the hole comes from? If you look at the grid outside the shapes it’s a normal grid made of perfect squares, but the grid “under” the shapes is all kindsa’ rectagles and double lines all flyin’ around akimbo.
O_P

Comment #33 explains this best.

2/5 != 3/8 although they are very close.
To put is another way 0.4 != 0.375.
jathomas

The gridlines are not off (well, not significantly. There may be some aliasing shift, by a pixel, but not enough to cause a unit-sized hole).

Don’t believe me? Do what I did. Go into Photoshop, and copy the triangles from the first puzzle, and drag them onto the second. They are a perfect match!

Just in case the other explanations are thowing you (IE: “The triangles are different”), try this:

In the top puzzle, the hypotenuse of the entire shape (consisting of the combined hypotenuse length of the red and green triangles) seems to be pushed in a bit. If you could see a silhouette of the shape, this would be clearer.

In the bottom puzzle, the line seems to bow outwards. This is because the green triangle truly is steeper than the red triangle.
Anonymous

When you look at how both ‘triangles’ cut the grid you know that they’re not the same.

Hold a ruler against the longest side of the top and the bottom triangle and you’ll see that neither one is actually a true triangle to begin with.

They’re both curved. This is a good one!
SamSam

Why is everyone blaming the grid? The grid has nothing to do with the solution. If anything, it makes finding the solution much easier, not harder, because it allows you to count gridlines and see the angle in the “hypotenuse” of the two shapes.
Boeotian

actually the grid just makes it easier to spot, as you can see the hypotenuse crosses the squares at different points when you compare both, thus concluding the angles are different.
blurple

angles of the triangles are different.
Anonymous

This little trick freaked me out so much in college that my world view was altered significantly for 24 hours.

Stupid stupid me.
retchdog

The hypotenuse on the top is slightly convex (turquoise triangle has greater slope than red).

Hence when they are swapped, the top is slightly concave, thus the mass is “used up” faster. Fast enough to make way for the hole, but slow enough to not be easily noticable.

In short, the two figures are actually quadrangles; not triangles.
Anonymous

how can they be different if triangle is same dimensions?
zjmna

Quite a cool little puzzle, I can solve it but I don’t think I could ever create it.
zjmna

It’s easy to see if you try to line a piece of paper up along the “hypotenuse” of the shape.
z7q2

More specifically, the slope of the red triangle’s hypotenuse is gentler than that of the hunter green triangle. So the top composite triangle’s ‘hypotenuse’ is indented at the join, and the bottom triangle is pushed out at the join.

Love this puzzle, it’s a classic. And nice to have an excuse to say ‘hypotenuse’ on BoingBoing.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Community Manager

We don’t see it because the slight irregularity of the figures is below our normal noise level. We automatically correct for it.
retchdog

I think if it weren’t for the thick black outlines it’d be easier to see… It’s more of a trick than a puzzle.
trr

also notice that the point (8,3) is ON the top triangle but it is INSIDE the bottom triangle,(0,0) being the leftmost point of each triangle, so they are clearly not the same figures.
felixjawesome

Everyone is wrong!

2 + 2 = 5
Anonymous

I remember this from grade school.

lrn2geometry
JoshuaZ

Yes, this is a classic geometric puzzler. It was invented about 50 years ago by Paul Curry who was an amatuer magician and amateur mathematician. Very talented guy. Similar puzzles have been around for about a hundred fifty years but Curry’s is noteworthy for being especially simple to see that there’s a problem and being especially trick to solve.
Jason Rizos

They are both 13 squares long, 5 squares high. Fibonacci sequence. The extra square of area is redistributed by switching the triangles. Nice!

Now do it in three dimensions!
Thad E Ginataom

And it should be from whence comes this hole?
Aloisius

The slope of the hypotenuse changes. You can visually see it by comparing the square three up from the missing piece.

Basically, one of those is not a triangle.
Anonymous

@ #9 No. It would be whence comes this hole.
Brainspore

Ow! My Hippocampus!
richlb

This illusion is most effective because the grid lines throw your eyes off. With the gridlines removed, the different angles on the two different triangles becomes more apparent.
jathomas

Hmmm… A cute puzzle like this often makes me feel obtuse.
Narual

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangram
kahomono

Simple: the two triangles are drawn to look similar (in the geometry sense of that word) but they cannot be, unless arcsin(0.4) = arcsin(0.375)
n

Ceci n’est pas une triangle
SamSam

An old one, but a classic.

It’s best when you have the person cut up the shapes and then put them together and try and work out where the extra space comes from. I think it took me so long the first time I saw it specifically because I was working with cut-out shapes: I just assumed that the slight difference in angles was because I cut sloppily. (I did work it out in the end though, and was chuffed).
ft88

I always thought the trick wasn’t a curve or anything like that but that the bottom triangle is actually slightly larger than the upper one. In other words the empty square comes from the circumferance being slightly larger. You can really see the difference when you look where the blue/tan/red join on the hypotenuse of the bottom one and the corresponding point on the top one. The bottom intersects the blue graph lines and the top one is below it.

One square is miniscule when spread out over the entire area
Eric Hart

So if you keep rearranging the shapes, will the whole thing eventually disappear?
EricHarley

A guy I used to work with made a puzzle based on this trick.

The idea is that you can rearrange the pieces so that neither, either, or both of the 1×1 squares sitting in the bottom of the puzzle fit in the top portion of the puzzle.
noah

A puzzle with a similar theme is the classic Vanishing Leprechaun.
SamSam

@ft88: That’s what people are meaning when they say that the big triangle is “concave” or “convex.” They don’t mean actually curved, just that one angles out slightly and one angles in slightly, because of this difference you mentioned.
eagleapex

Whoa. Brain a little stronger now. Assume nothing!
Godfree

@9 Thad: The grammar was bugging me more than the puzzle!
usonia

Wow, Noah! Thanks for posting the Leprechaun, I saw that YEARS ago in a Martin Gardner column, but can never find it.
gmr2048

@ #12 Technically, it really should be just “whence comes this hole?“. “From whence” is redundant. Oddly enough this just came up in conversation with a friend last week. He corrected my use of “from whence” so I looked it up:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/whence
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  hence = from here
  thence = from there
  whence = from where
  hither = to here
  thither = to there
  whither = to where
  
  How did you people survive The Lord of The Rings?
Takuan

makes sence
joelphillips

Don’t know if he was the original, but Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll posed a problem like this in the 19th century … (searching for references).
Strophe

Good puzzle. Am I the only one who felt cheated when I found out the answer? I guess I assumed since it looked straight-ish, it must be straight.

Hey, Thad (#9): Be wary of getting linguistically pedantic, bro. “Whence” means ‘from where?’ (Though I concede from whence is pretty common, if redundant.)

I didn’t order extra prepositions on my archaism! :P
RyonRyon

yeah, it didn’t help the low-rezzy artifacty .jpg, although maybe that was on purpose to help hide the variance in angle (that along with my fish-eye-lens glasses….)

I thought I could waltz in with the answer to get a RISE out of you all, but I see the comments are already OVER RUN with the solution.

sorry.
gonzilla

Throw it in the lake.
If it sinks, its a witch.
AGF

@ 33 – that’s how I figured it out too. Well explained.
@ 50 – ditto. I thought – hey those triangle are filling up the squares differently.
I’m also the person who walks around houses straightening all the pictures.
pewma

hmmm, I thought the angles of the triangle are the same but the sizes are different…
Anonymous

I didn’t find the answer until I read the comments.

‘Course I’m under 40 which means that I’m of a generation that values knowing where to find the answer over how to find the answer.
Sekino

@ Strophe Am I the only one who felt cheated when I found out the answer?

Nope: I was asking myself the exact same question a few comments before yours.
the boy

http://www.myconfinedspace.com/2007/06/20/rule-34-impossible-triangle-sex/

So, yeah, there’s rule 34 of this. Which, in my opinion, is almost as fascinating as the puzzle itself.
the link’s SFW, surprisingly
daemon2k3

This is my attempt to prove this wrong: http://daemon2k3.blogspot.com/2008/12/fail-uber-hax-en-la-geometra-euclidiana.html
flwombat

Best combo of optical illusion and math problem!

The gridlines are brilliant because they enhance the optical illusion making you think the slope is straight, but they also provide clues related to slope if you are looking closely enough. They also make it easiest to prove the trick by counting rises and runs for each of the small triangles.

Reach all the way back to basic geometry! Rise over run! The red triangle has a slope of 3/8 and the green one has a slope of 2/5, clearly not the same.
Anonymous

See: spiritualism vs. religion

By proving one fix, you legitimise the other!

Also, triangle math is not-always-applicable…
TroofSeeker

Carnac the Malcontented took the missing piece. He said his table was wobbling.
LarryWelz

It being on a grid fakes you out so you assume the lines are uhh.. lined up. So it’s actually an optical illusion, not a geometric puzzle at all.
Anonymous

the slopes on the two triangle pieces are different so the overall shape is NOT a triangle.
travispulley

not that hard – you can see there is not a straight line along the hypotenuse of the whole triangle where the two smaller triangles meet. In the top one, it’s “dented inward” so it fills the hole created by bending it out the other way.
doug117

The heights of the components are not exactly integers although it appears that way.
The red triangle (assuming the overall shape is 13×5) is actually about 3.07 squares high.

The little bits add up (or subtract out).

(If the top figure is 5 units high, the bottom figure is ~5.07 units high.)
pixleshifter

Here’s the fact. It’s not a curved line, and it’s not an optical illusion. All of the area of the shapes is accounted for.
I’d have thought a lot more of you were graphic designers. I drew the shapes as vectors and placed them accordingly, when I examined the shape with a finer grid it all makes perfect sense.
If you can use a vector programme and have a little web space somewhere, someone, please post a graphic illustration of where the extra area is accounted for, lest this post becomes a quagmire of superstition amidst normally rational BoingBoingers.
doomslang

I swear you are all wrong! Look at my comment #53! The grid is all fudged…the triangles aren’t “curved!” What the heck!
mokey

i totally felt cheated. damn grid. but then it made me want me want to listen to emerson, lake, and palmer. all was forgiven.
doomslang

I mean #54, sorry.
doomslang

Well here’s the original thing without a messed up grid and the answer. So I don’t know what the deal is.
http://brainden.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=139
ZachDCox

I remember seeing this puzzle many years ago. I did figure it out then and I think writing, what I hope is, a simple explanation will be informative.

http://zachcox.blogspot.com/2009/03/analytic-geometry-puzzle

Enjoy
help i cant comfirm my username themelonbread

Although “whence” technically means “from which” or “from where,” the usage of “from whence” is pretty well established; plenty of sources from the 14th century use it.
George William Herbert

Theresa wrote @45:

We don’t see it because the slight irregularity of the figures is below our normal noise level. We automatically correct for it.

I spotted something was off straight away, but had to count squares to be sure. The hypotenuse didn’t look straight in either one.

I do a lot of on-paper designing things, though, and have a pretty well developed eye for lines that should line up and don’t (“The hull plates and bottom aren’t faired together quite right, that’s not really straight! D’oh!”)
Saisumimen

“FWD:FWD:FWD:Fwd:FWD:LOL CUTE LITTLE PUZZLE HAHA”

Grandma, stop sending me these. (and the bottom one isn’t a real triangle)
eclectro

So it’s just all a trick. And here I thought we had invented a new math that would allow us to travel across the universe through measured triangular wormholes in space and time, from whence we could go forward.
misshallelujah

It’s not that tough IMHO– we learnt it in I guess what would be the equivalent of grade school. The cyan and red triangles are not similar triangles and so don’t form a straight line, so the combined shape is not an actual triangle for real.
Ned613

It’s a hoax. The second triangle has been photoshopped.
misshallelujah

Also, “from where comes this hole?” strangely reminds me of “how is babby formed?”
Anonymous

The cause of the problem is the pink circle in the middle, next to the orange prism.
Alex