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ABOUT TANZZLE: Tangram and its neighbors
The name derives from the well known tangram game. Tangram is a Chinese puzzle made by cutting a square of thin material into five triangles, a square, and a rhomboid. The tangram pieces are named tans and can be arranged on a plane in a virtually infinite number of configurations. Indeed, many variants of the tangram game have been and can be developed, using tans of other shapes. More than 30 new designs of sets were made in Germany by Ritcher & Co, toward the end of 19th century. Tangram and the other dissection puzzles were made from stone and named 'The Anchor Puzzles'. Indeed, in the case of Tangram-like puzzles, it is hard to find books or other sources for the silhouettes to be guessed. Such a limitation have been removed with Tanzzle, which is an almost endless source of silhouettes built from either Tangram or other sets of tans. We are currently proposing four sets: Tangram, Trapeze, Phytagoras and Number 5
Silhouettes
There exist many books containing hundreds of patterns obtained by arranging the Tangram pieces. The figures are printed in such a way you cannot detect the borders of matched pieces. The puzzle just consists in realizing how those silhouettes can be get using all the seven not-overlapping pieces. The silhouettes often look like animals, humans, objects, and others. Tangram tradition is focused onto pattern recognition, that is to say there is a sort of game in the game to consider silhouettes who represent something or someone. Patterns are mainly of interest to a Tangram player as far as he is challenged to solve them. But the visual effect is important, as well. Enjoy both with Tanzzle.
Convex figures
A hard-to-solve pattern has as few dangling pieces as possible. From this point of view, the convex figures should be the best, but well known. A figure is called convex when every point on a line joining any two points of the figure lies within the figure itself. There exist exactly 13 convex figure, which can be obtained with the Tangram pieces. This was rigorously demonstrated by F. T. Wang and C. C. Hsung in the 'American Mathematical Monthly', volume 19, 1942.
Matched patterns
It's easy to identify dangling pieces (e.g. the tail of the cat above). As a rule of thumb, hard-to-solve patterns are built by matching as much edges and vertices of the pieces as possibile, as in the convex figures. Tanzzle software deals with both matched patterns and dangling pieces. All the silhouettes can be described in this way. The patterns which cannot be described as done, can be slightly modified, still mantaining almost the same silhouette and resemblance (click on the following picture and compare with the above one. You need the TZLviewer freeware).
The pieces
The pieces of the game are geometrical shapes which can be arranged on a plane. Tanzzle software currently deals with 4 sets of pieces: Tangram, Trapeze, Phytagoras, and Number 5. A Tangram set made of wood or plastic can be purchased in toys & games shops. All the set can be made by your own by printing the pictures near the title (click to enlarge) and cutting the pieces. DON’T MIX the pieces of two different sets.
Tangram was born in China long time ago, but the first written sources date only back to the eighteenth century. The name Tangram has not a fully accepted origin. Someone talks about Tang, a Cantones word for 'Chinese', and Gram, meaning 'something drawn' The Chinese have called Tangram the 'Board of Wisdom' (Chinese: Hanyu Pinyin: qi qiao ban; literally 'seven boards of cunning'). There are many references and links on Tangram. Be aware that the parallelogram is a 'special' piece for which flipping is not equivalent to any rotation in the plane
Trapeze is the name we refer to the following tangram type puzzle set. We are not aware of its origin. As well as Tangram, it is a dissection of a square. The rectangle trapeze is a 'special' piece for which flipping is not equivalent to any rotation.
Pythagoras is the name we refer to this set. This puzzle is a simplified 6-pieces version of one of the ‘Anchor Puzzles'. The rectangle trapeze is a 'special' piece for which flipping is not equivalent to any rotation: it was further dissected in a triangle and a parallelogram in the original version.
Number 5 is the name we refer to 'Trouble Killer', one of the 'Anchor Puzzles'. This puzzle is No. 5 of that collection. It is a dissection of a rectangle, not of a square. It has no 'special' piece, that is flipping is always equivalent to a rotation in the plane.







the starting dissection





the House





convex figures
the cat






















AreYouGame.com












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