How can you divide this piece of land into four equally shaped pieces?
As ever, please do NOT post your answers, but feel free to say if you have solved it and how long it took. Answer on Monday!
Richard Wiseman
Quirky mind stuff
How can you divide this piece of land into four equally shaped pieces?
As ever, please do NOT post your answers, but feel free to say if you have solved it and how long it took. Answer on Monday!
Yep, in about 2 minutes a simple solution dawned on my slow wits.
Equally shaped or sized?
Shaped is easy
Shaped AND sized. Knew it already, but it took me about ten minutes the first time.
About 30 seconds. Equal size, equal shape.
4 identical shapes in about 10 seconds. I have to admit I’ve come across this puzzle (or similar) elswhere.
Pretty quickly. My spacial visualisation isn’t the best so I had to think: three squares divided by four; how large should each piece be? Then I drew a picture. All up, maybe two minutes.
about a minute. It just LLLLooked right
Surely that’s giving it away…
Hooray! I actually managed to do this one instead if having to come back later after my coffee.
About 30 seconds, which astonished me as I was ready to settle into a good 10 minute puzzling session. I don’t have any conscious memory of seeing this puzzle before, but I guess something must have been lurking in the background.
‘of’ not if. Clearly not that awake yet.
45 seconds. 4 pieces, equal sizes, equal shapes
We’re on to easy puzzles again. Ah, well, I always like a good, simple geometry puzzle.
This is a old one
Yep solved it. 30 seconds, without pencil and paper
I think I can do it with 3 lines, but the sections would only be the same shape, not size.
ooooh,god,15minutes passed.
View this on an iPod or iPhone and tilt the screen. You can see where someone has (badly) erased the answer in MS Paint.
Ooooops!
Haha, indeed you’re right (checked in Gimp).
Yes indeed. As I was about to say, the answer is hidden in the image itself.
Which means that anyone who tries to solve it by copying the image into a paint program, dividing it into sections, and using the fill tool to mark those sections with different colours will stumble upon the answer right there in the original image.
I know, because that’s what I did.
Also works if you tilt your laptop screen, thanks for the tip guys!! And i did exactly what Flesh Eating Dragon did!! mwhaha
But, um, yeah, i solved it in like 3 seconds before i saw any of that, so, … what do i win?!
0.5 seconds…
About 30 seconds from reading to getting to a solution on paper. I think that attacking it mathematically before trying to do it geometrically helped.
I hate to be “one of those” but I did get it within 2 or 3 seconds of reading the puzzle. Now I just feel dirty and used.
i saw this quickly, like in 5 seconds or so
Well blast it with the drugs took me 15 minutes but was watching a movie too but then it hit me really just a match stick one again and then poof got it…..heheheeee wicked Richard is being tricky again……or it’s the pain meds……maybe…….heheheee….
Someone really, really needs to take my keyboard away from me when I do my pain meds…. :}
it is similar like dividing a ciruclar pie in to 8 pieces with 3 cuts.
it takes one minute.
I got equal shapes in a flash, equal shape AND size about 1 min (with the help of spoiler comment above!)
LOL i actually saw it before I read the question because I knew this one already
I actually bought a book full of riddles and I found out that many in them are posted here.
A few minutes.
10 secs, but I’ve seen it before.
Surely if someone posts a spoiler it doesn’t help to emphasize it with a comment saying it’s a spoiler?
Maby I am wrong but it took my 2 sec and seems correct.
15 seconds and a pencil. Squared Paper FTW!
Yes. Took about 3 seconds.
More Geometry puzzles please Richard.
1/2 minute… same shape and size
seconds, as i instantaneously saw an expectedly right solution in my mind,,
wonder if there are others ..
1 second flat. Seen it before tho!
2 mins.
I think this one also has been featured before, not too long ago.
30 seconds.
Is there any way of just removing spoiler comments? Seems to be the worst kind of smugness, and if there was an understanding that they’d just be deleted it might a) stop people doing it and b) avoid off-topic comments like this about spoilers…
Spoiler comments are deleted when Richard gets around to it. There are plenty of precedents in previous Friday puzzles.
No, there probably isn’t a way of building a Richard robot to make this happen faster.
4 identical shapes in about 10 secs.
Its easy and it took only under 30 seconds
5-10 sec? It were not that bad…
2 mins
I got the answer after about 3 minutes, but have to confess I have seen this puzzle before so was trying to remember as much as work out the solution!
Still it got my brain working and that’s the general idea!!
Umm the answer is in the picture. I’m looking at it on my iPhone screen and there’s a ‘phantom’ outline of the answer in the ‘blank’ area of the shape that somebody has badly drawn on paint (by the looks of things). Just thought you ought to know…
piece of cake
dude
jst a look
Got 4 identical shapes in about 30 seconds. For identical shape and size i guess i have to work on paper .
5 seconds. Maybe I have seen thid before.
this
Oh I remember some geometry! Though I’m sure there are other ways much more difficult than my simple method.
It’s been noted already, but I’ll throw another comment on the pile that equal shape is really easy and quick (took me about 2 seconds), but equal shape _and size_ is a bit tougher.
About 15 seconds to get a ‘rough’ answer. About 2 minutes to get it exact.
Approximately 7 milliseconds. I must have seen this one before.
Oh dear, this one is particularly easy given that the answer is already drawn inside the image itself.
To make it slightly more challenging….umm….does it have to use up all of the area provided? Still, if it doesn’t, that takes 1/5 of a second longer to figure out than having the answer drawn inside the puzzle to begin with.
After five minutes, I cheated and tilted my LCD screen
I got it after about 10 seconds, but it took me about 2 minutes to make sure I was right since I never get these types of things in 10 seconds.
Now I’m worried that the clue may have subconciously helped me. D:
Equal shape, 2 different sizes: 2 lines, a few seconds.
Equal shape, equal sizes: Cheated – used the information above to extract the solution from the image itself.
moi aussi!
Hah! .69 milliseconds! With my eyes closed!
I could see the lines where you erased the lines from before. You might want to work on your photoshop skills.
Tricky wording, 2 minutes.
Managed it in about a minute – think I might have seen it before though..
First Friday Puzzle I’ve ever managed! Pretty quickly too… twenty seconds?
5 seconds: you forgot something in the image!
I spent some time splitting it up with different imaginary cuts and getting nowhere.
Then, to get a better idea of the size of a quarter piece, I subdivided it smaller parts and got the answer instantly.
Equally shaped: 3 sec
Equally shaped and sized: 3 min without a clue, 3 sec on paper
Very fun puzzle! I just got out of a super boring meeting at work where I wasn’t paying attention.
Instead, I just sat at a full conference table, drawing that shape, and eventually figured it out after about 15 minutes.
Took a nap. Then it came to me.
I got it in 4 identical bits, and 9 and 16 and 25 – how many shapes can do this?
It’s also kind of a fractal if you keep going.
Quite, but that observation tantamount to giving the answer…
Same shape, not size… It took me about a minute
SPOILER ALERT — Do not click unless you want to see the answer…
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4135/4867827636_3a383960b1.jpg
Bad form…
couple seconds.
Finally, one that I got quickly, and know that the answer’s right!
took about 10 mins,,, the idea came from a C programming code. It is the tiling problem as it is referred..
Well now that some of the haze has cleared from my brain I think my first answer would work well if we were using matches but not so good for this one ……but after a good 10 min of rethinking I believe by george I have an answer……lol…
Toys R Us – Super Summer Sale plus Special Offers & Toy Story 3…
I found your entry interesting thus I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog
…
More interesting: how many different ways can you do this? Equal size&shape I guess only 1 way. Different size I have 3 ways but wonder if rectangles is possible….
i’ve done this before in school when i was 10. regards from singapore.
Seconds.
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Easy. A few seconds. (I was out last weekend, that’s why I didn’t wrote anything).
like 5 seconds not tht hard