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    Tangrams: 330 Puzzles
    Tangrams: 330 Puzzles
    Tangrams: 330 Puzzles
    Ebook159 pages41 minutes

    Tangrams: 330 Puzzles

    By Ronald C. Read

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    About this ebook

    What is a tangram? It is more easily seen and understood than defined in words. But to put it briefly, it is a geometric dissection puzzle in which seven standard pieces (five triangles, one square, one rhomboid) are used to make images of various objects. The origin of the name is not known, but the game itself is of Chinese origin, and for centuries it has been one of the most popular diversions in the Orient.
    The tangram is not entirely new to America, since Yankee sea captains brought books of tangram puzzles back from Canton and Shanghai. Edgar Allan Poe was a devotee, while on the other side of the world Napoleon is said to have whiled away his time with them. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the two great modern puzzlers, H. E. Dudeney and Sam Loyd, greatly enlarged the traditional field of tangram situations.
    This collection gathers together nearly 330 tangrams, the best creations of both Chinese and Occidental puzzle devisers. Included are some of the most striking Oriental puzzles, carefully selected from rare nineteenth-century books and some of the most inventive and imaginative inventions of Loyd and Dudeney. Although individual tangrams have always been favorite members of most collections of mathematical amusements, to our knowledge this is the first book devoted entirely to this popular form in many decades.
    Some of the tangrams in this collection are relatively easy and can be solved without too much brain-straining. Others are difficult, and many demand quite a bit of mental sweat before they are resolved. All, however, are delightful concoctions in recreational form-perception and will provide many hours of pleasure.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateDec 8, 2014
    ISBN9780486801292
    Tangrams: 330 Puzzles

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      Some history, 330 puzzles organized by subject.

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    Tangrams - Ronald C. Read

    SOLUTIONS

    Introduction

    THE seven-piece puzzle, or tangram as it is usually known in the West, has come to us from China. It is in all probability the original Chinese puzzle—the proverbial prototype of all that is perplexing and tricky. This puzzle resembles the familiar jigsaw puzzle in that it is concerned with the fitting together of geometrical shapes, yet in all other respects the two puzzles are completely different; for whereas the jigsaw puzzle consists of a large number of pieces of rather complicated shapes, which have to be fitted together in a unique way, the tangram consists of only seven pieces of simple shapes, and the whole charm of the puzzle lies in the extraordinary variety of ways in which these pieces can be put together.

    The seven pieces which make up the tangram can be cut from a single square, as shown in Figure 1. There are thus two small triangles, one medium-sized triangle, and two large triangles, in addition to a square and a lozenge-shaped piece.

    FIGURE I

    The medium-sized triangle and the square and the rhomboid are all twice the area of one of the small triangles; each of the large triangles is four times the area of a small triangle. All the angles in these pieces are either right angles or angles of 45 ° or 135⁰. A set of tangram pieces can easily be made from cardboard. However, the enthusiast will probably want to make his set from wood, plastic or some other more durable material.

    With a set of seven tangram pieces, the reader can make (if he tries hard enough) all the outlines that are to be found in the following pages except those of the last two chapters, and a quick glance through these pages will reveal the surprisingly large number of different outlines that can be constructed from such a small number of pieces. This is what has made the tangram popular in the country of its origin and also in the West. From time to time it has been revived on both sides of the Atlantic and has enjoyed a certain vogue, even though it has never achieved the status of such established pastimes as checkers or tic-tac-toe.

    The tangram has a reputation for being very old, and this may well be, though one should beware the common tendency to ascribe exaggerated age to all things Chinese. I have in my possession two books of tangrams printed in China in 1813 and 1823. In the preface to one of these the author says that the origin of the seven-piece puzzle is not known ... This would suggest that the puzzle was even then regarded as old, though just how old is a matter for conjecture. Despite this, I have been quite unable to find any Chinese books on tangrams, or even any reference to this kind of puzzle, dating earlier than the beginning of the nineteenth century, at which time a large number of books on the subject

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