Tangrams and Dissection Puzzles

A dissection puzzle begins with a shape divided into pieces. The solver rearranges every piece, normally without overlap, to make a new target figure.

The Stomachion

The Stomachion, or Archimedes’ Box, is an ancient square divided into fourteen pieces. It demonstrates that the idea of rearranging geometric parts long predates the modern toy trade.

The seven-piece tangram

The tangram contains two large triangles, one medium triangle, two small triangles, a square and a parallelogram. It became a major puzzle craze in China around 1800 and spread quickly to Europe and North America during the early nineteenth century. Books presented silhouettes of people, animals, buildings and objects to reproduce using all seven pieces.

Why tangrams remain useful

Tangrams are simple to manufacture but support many levels of challenge. They develop visualisation, rotation, reflection and part-to-whole reasoning. The parallelogram is especially important because turning it over changes its handedness.

Modern relatives

Pentominoes, polyforms, packing puzzles and transformation puzzles all share the central idea of creating new wholes from fixed pieces. Unlike a jigsaw, the target may have no picture printed on the parts and may permit several valid solutions.