Let’s make it more interesting. Is there a figure that that can be cut, with a single contiguous cut, in only a finite number of ways and reassembled to form a rectangle, where the number of ways is > 3? Is there a unique (single possible cut) solution?
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Sounds like an isosceles triangle.
Edit: although you’d have to flip one of the triangles after the cut. Which is probably cheating. So a rhomboid?
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I didn’t imagine limiting rotations. I think a rhombus has an infinite parallel cuts, and another similar cut across opposite edges.
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Looks like I wasn’t the only one (here or on YouTube) who realized there are other solutions.
I am enjoying the meta-puzzle of “why was this supposed to be difficult” and have come up with three ideas:
- There was some sort of extra parameter to the puzzle he forgot to mention
- He genuinely thinks this is difficult for his audience
- This is some sort of epic troll to root out a bunch of pedantic math nerds like myself
Personally, I’m going with #1 but am not ready to rule out #2 or #3 either.
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Personally, I’d call that three cuts.
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It’s fizzbuzz for geometry.
As there are other solutions more simple than the one shown, I think the puzzle was described incorrectly. The solution given is for the more difficult (unstated) problem “Cut the figure into two pieces that can form a square”.
Exactly. My solution was to cut it diagonally starting from the bottom inside corner, and heading north-east; and then flip one piece over and join the diagonals.
Finally was able to watch the video. Yeah, clearly square rather than rectangle.
Either way, there was the “lateral thinking” that the cut didn’t have to be straight. To that I say, “Come on!”
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Yeah, I define a single cut to be a straight line or continuously differentiable curve that can be made without stopping to reorient the scissors. Horizontally down the middle is my answer as daneel has depicted. Well, my first answer was to fold the page and remove both tabs with a single cut but I decided that this was implicitly a plane geometry question.
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A 45 degree cut that goes through the center point works too…because flipping one of them seems less like cheating than calling three line segments a single “cut.” Like many of these"think outside the box" type of puzzles it’s about ignoring rules that you think are “implied.”
oddly, my first solution involved folding it in a particular way before making the one cut. then i though about the cut through the middle. the zig-zag never crossed my mind.
Well, that escalated quickly.
That’s what I thought. Single cut?
I came up with bisecting the shape with a single vertical cut. Since the dimensions weren’t given, I considered that the rectangle would likely have a rectangular hole in the middle of it, but I didn’t see that ruled out. Maybe that’s what was meant by “using all the area”.
It’s about ignoring exactly the implied rule that the puzzle maker wanted you to ignore and not ignoring the other implied rules.
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I’ve done enough of these team building exercises, puzzles etc at work training courses to know that you never, ever ask about rules that you think are “implied.”. If you think of something clever that wasn’t explicitly banned, don’t ask if it was allowed, just do it. If you ask, they’ll say no. They can change the rules for the next people through.
Where is the challenge? This took all of 2 seconds.
I used the “straight vertical cut, then rotating” solution. I guess the puzzle forgot to mention parts should be “equal area” or even “same shape”.
As somebody told, most “logic” math puzzles are simply language puzzles based on breaking pragmatic conversational rules and adding some ambiguity, so puzzle author probably expected people look for same shape pattern or straight cut withou being asked to.
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