05 February 2014

155. Remove squares to form equal areas

Easy Medium Hard Extreme


Shown in the figure are 5 squares formed with 60 matchsticks.

The length of 1 stick is 1 unit. As an example, let's calculate the number of square units for the area labelled C:
= Total Area C - Total Area D
= (3 X 3) - (2 X 2)
= 5 square units

The challenge is to remove ALL the sticks of ANY 2 squares so that 2 of the 3 remaining areas have the same number of square units.

Show Answer


Remove all the sticks of the 1X1 and 2X2 squares. The remaining areas are calculate as:
A: (5 X 5) - (4 X 4) = 9 square units
B: (4 X 4) - (3 X 3) = 7 square units
C: (3 X 3) = 9 square units

The areas A and C are the same which solves the puzzle!

Hide Answer

No comments:

Post a Comment