14 Penguin Book of Curious and Interesting Puzzles

31. This frame is composed of four rods that ar'e hinged to each other
at their ends. When will the area enclosed by the frame be a maximum?

32. This figure shows the corner of a room with a screen, composed
of two identical halves hinged together, placed to cut off a portion of
the corner of the room. How should the screen be placed to enclose
as large an area as possible?

33. An isosceles triangle has two equal sides of length 10, hinged
together. What is the maximum area of the triangle?

Metrodorus and the Greek Anthology

The Greek Anthology is a collection of literary verses and epigrams.
Surprisingly, Book XIV comprises a large number of riddles, enigmas
and puzzles, credited to Metrodorus (c. 500 AD).
These include not only arithmetical puzzles, but very early word
puzzles, including beheadings, in which a word loses letter after letter
from its front end but always remains a proper word, and this puzzle:
If you put one hundred in the middle of a burning fire, you will
find the son and a slayer of a virgin.
The answer is to put the Greek symbol for 100, rho, into the word
for fire, pyros, to get Pyrrhos, the son of Deidamia and the slayer of
Polyxena.