Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 “Dat Pussle”
- 2 Our Geometric Universe
- 3 Fearful Symmetry
- 4 It's Hip to Be a Square
- 5 Triangles and Friends
- 6 All Polygons Created Equal
- 7 First Steps
- 8 Step Right Up!
- 9 Watch Your Step!
- 10 Just Tessellating
- 11 Plain Out-Stripped
- 12 Strips Teased
- 13 Tessellations Completed
- 14 Maltese Crosses
- 15 Curves Ahead
- 16 Stardom
- 17 Farewell, My Lindgren
- 18 The New Breed
- 19 When Polygons Aren't Regular
- 20 On to Solids
- 21 Cubes Rationalized
- 22 Prisms Reformed
- 23 Cheated, Bamboozled, and Hornswoggled
- 24 Solutions to All Our Problems
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index of Dissections
- General Index
12 - Strips Teased
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 “Dat Pussle”
- 2 Our Geometric Universe
- 3 Fearful Symmetry
- 4 It's Hip to Be a Square
- 5 Triangles and Friends
- 6 All Polygons Created Equal
- 7 First Steps
- 8 Step Right Up!
- 9 Watch Your Step!
- 10 Just Tessellating
- 11 Plain Out-Stripped
- 12 Strips Teased
- 13 Tessellations Completed
- 14 Maltese Crosses
- 15 Curves Ahead
- 16 Stardom
- 17 Farewell, My Lindgren
- 18 The New Breed
- 19 When Polygons Aren't Regular
- 20 On to Solids
- 21 Cubes Rationalized
- 22 Prisms Reformed
- 23 Cheated, Bamboozled, and Hornswoggled
- 24 Solutions to All Our Problems
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index of Dissections
- General Index
Summary
“I exhibited this problem before the Royal Society, at Burlington House, on 17th May 1905, and also at the Royal Institution in the following month, in the more general form:– ‘A New Problem on Superposition…’ I add an illustration showing the puzzle in a rather curious practical form, as it was made in polished mahogany with brass hinges for use by certain audiences…” Such was Henry Ernest Dudeney's legendary introduction of the magnificent 4-piece dissection of a triangle to a square.
What excitement! And yet lurking beneath the surface is a sense of being teased by what we are not told: How was Dudeney received in those rarefied (and perhaps stuffy) circles? What became of his paper “A New Problem…”? Who were those certain audiences? Where did that polished mahogany model end up? How was the dissection discovered?
The triangle-to-square dissection, shown in Figure 12.2, and in fully hinged form in Figure 12.1, is most remarkable. The puzzle was originally posed by Dudeney (Dispatch, 1902a), followed two weeks later with some unusual discussion by Dudeney (Dispatch, 1902b), and finally two weeks after that with the solution and explanation by Dudeney (Dispatch, 1902c). A careful study of the three columns can produce some doubt as to whether Dudeney was the one who discovered the dissection. We are teased by the delay of an additional two weeks in publishing the solution; by the generous praise that Dudeney heaped on C. W. McElroy, the only reader to solve the problem in four pieces; and by the failure of Dudeney to state unequivocally that he had discovered the 4-piece dissection. Could it have been discovered by McElroy?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- DissectionsPlane and Fancy, pp. 136 - 149Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997