Welcome to the enigmatic triangle situation. What’s going on here?
![Triangle](https://i3.wp.com/www.bluejayblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Triangle.png)
When the same shapes are repositioned, they appear to require less space and create an empty square. How is this possible?
[expand title=”SOLUTION“]A friend shared this mind-boggling puzzle with me during college, and it baffled me until the solution finally clicked in. Here’s what’s really going on:
At first glance, it seems like a simple rearrangement of a single large triangle’s pieces:
But, there’s a sneaky twist concerning the big hypotenuse in both triangles.
The crux lies in the slopes. The blue, red, and apparent big triangles all have varying slopes:
![Paradoja_del_cuadrado_perdido_10,AB](https://i2.wp.com/149909199.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Paradoja_del_cuadrado_perdido_10AB.png)
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More puzzles on Blue Jay Blog:
The Stick Figure puzzle
The Three Jellybean Problem
The Puzzle of the Pirate Booty
The Two Envelopes Problem
The Infinite Checkerboard Quandary
And one very big puzzle:
What Makes You You?
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Wikimedia Commons↩