3 ms·
Do you mean a box with an x through it? I guess the rules never said the ends of the matchsticks had to match up either. I'm definitely enjoying all these dif
by shard 16y ago
Do you mean a box with an x through it? I guess the rules never said the ends of the matchsticks had to match up either. I'm definitely enjoying all these different answers which explore (exploit?) the imprecisely specified problem.
- zck 16y agoThat's still more than four triangles -- two right triangles next to each other that way make a larger triangle. One way to make only four triangles is: \ / \ / -------\----/------ \1 / \/ /\ \ / \ / \ / 2 \ / ---\---/------\----/- \3/ \4 / \ \/ / \ /\ / \ / \
- nooneelse 16y agoOk, so make a box with an incomplete x in the middle, a "y", by only sticking that one match partway into the square. \ \---- |\ /| | \/ | | / | |/ | ----
- anigbrowl 16y agoNo. Sorry to reply so late, I posted so early this morning I forgot about it during the day. | | /|\ / | \ / / \ \ // \\ /---------\ / \ / \ Argh, that's ugly. In case it's not clear, 3 matches in an upward-pointing triangle, 3 making an upside-down Y shape, the former on top of the latter so there's one large triangle trisected into 3 smaller internal triangles. Or it's the 3d tetrahedron solution squashed flat if you want to think about it that way. The cheat is that you've abandoned consistent shape and area for all triangles, plus there's the 'legs' sticking out if you're concerned about geometric efficiency.