Related papers: Dudeney's Dissection is Optimal

In 1994, Martin Gardner stated a set of questions concerning the dissection of a square or an equilateral triangle in three similar parts. Meanwhile, Gardner's questions have been generalized and some of them are already solved. In the…

We explore an instance of the question of partitioning a polygon into pieces, each of which is as ``circular'' as possible, in the sense of having an aspect ratio close to 1. The aspect ratio of a polygon is the ratio of the diameters of…

A square trisection is a problem of assembling three identical squares from a larger square, using a minimal number of pieces. This paper presents an historical overview of the square trisection problem starting with its origins in the…

We prove that any finite collection of polygons of equal area has a common hinged dissection. That is, for any such collection of polygons there exists a chain of polygons hinged at vertices that can be folded in the plane continuously…

In this paper, we deal with a simple geometric problem: Is it possible to partition a rectangle into $k$ non-congruent rectangles of equal area? This problem is motivated by the so-called `Mondrian art problem' that asks a similar question…

We enumerate all dissections of an equilateral triangle into smaller equilateral triangles up to size 20, where each triangle has integer side lengths. A perfect dissection has no two triangles of the same side, counting up- and…

We prove that almost every triangle can be dissected only into $n^2$ triangles which have to be equal one another. Moreover, such a dissection is unique for every $n$. It turns out that to solve this "simple" problem it is convenient to use…

We explore optimal circular nonconvex partitions of regular k-gons. The circularity of a polygon is measured by its aspect ratio: the ratio of the radii of the smallest circumscribing circle to the largest inscribed disk. An optimal…

In 1903, noted puzzle-maker Henry Dudeney published The Spider and the Fly puzzle, which asks for the shortest path along the surfaces of a square prism between two points (source and target) located on the square faces, and surprisingly…

In this paper we show that a lattice balanced polygon of odd area cannot be cut into an odd number of triangles of equal areas. First result of this type was obtained by Paul Monsky in 1970. He proved that a square cannot be cut into an odd…

An example of reversible (or hinge inside-out transformable) figures is the Dudeney's Haberdasher's puzzle in which an equilateral triangle is dissected into four pieces, then hinged like a chain, and then is transformed into a square by…

In this paper, we show that an equilateral triangle cannot be dissected into finitely many smaller equilateral triangles, no two of which share two vertices. We do this without the use of Electrical Networks.

Taking up the challenge McConnell laid down at the end of his proof of the law of cosines, we give a completely visual dissection proof of this theorem, which applies to any triangle. In order to avoid the trigonometric expressions of…

We study the dissection of a square into congruent convex polygons. Yuan \emph{et al.} [Dissecting the square into five congruent parts, Discrete Math. \textbf{339} (2016) 288-298] asked whether, if the number of tiles is a prime number…

In this paper, we consider the following geometric puzzle whose origin was traced to Allan Freedman \cite{croft91,tutte69} in the 1960s by Dumitrescu and T{\'o}th \cite{adriancasaba2011}. The puzzle has been popularized of late by Peter…

We describe a polynomial time algorithm that takes as input a polygon with axis-parallel sides but irrational vertex coordinates, and outputs a set of as few rectangles as possible into which it can be dissected by axis-parallel cuts and…

We study the disproportionate version of the classical cake-cutting problem: how efficiently can we divide a cake, here $[0,1]$, among $n$ agents with different demands $\alpha_1, \alpha_2, \dots, \alpha_n$ summing to $1$? When all the…

The Mondrian problem consists of dissecting a square of side length $n\in \NN$ into non-congruent rectangles with natural length sides such that the difference $d(n)$ between the largest and the smallest areas of the rectangles partitioning…

A congruum was first defined by Leonardo Pisano in 1225 and it is defined as the common difference in an arithmetic progression of three perfect squares. Later that year in his book Liber Quadratorum, Pisano proved that congruums can never…

In the March 2025 issue of Pour la Science, Jean-Paul Delahaye described a wonderful solution to the following problem: How many ways can you divide a 3 by 2n rectangle into two connected, congruent pieces? We show that this problem can be…