Math Puzzle: Build a Square
Divide this figure into three parts that can be arranged into a square. The parts must not be folded over to make their current back the front, they must not overlap, and there must not be any gaps in the square.
For simplicity, let’s assume that the small squares have a side length of 1. The figure consists of 25 small squares, so the full final square must have a side length of 5. In this case, 5 × 5 small squares are available, but there is no suitable way to separate them along the grid lines. The instructions, however, don’t forbid cuts that do not run along the square grid. Using the Pythagorean theorem, one can confirm that the two diagonal cuts below have a length of 5.
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This puzzle originally appeared in Spektrum der Wissenschaft and was reproduced with permission.
