Jigsaw illusion

Bill sends along this illusion.

Jigsaw illusion

Notice the purple square has 8 rows by 8 squares per row for a total of 64 squares.

The red rectangle has 5 rows of 13 squares per row for a total of 65 squares.

If you print out the illusion and then cut out on the bold lines (like I did) you’ll get this.

Jigsaw cut

Each similar shape of each color appears to be exactly the same size with the same number of cells and partial cells.

Thanks Bill

7 thoughts on “Jigsaw illusion”

  1. The slopes of the diagonal lines in the figure on the left are not the same as the single diagonal on the right… for the triangles the slope is 3/8 (0.375), for the 4-sided figures the slope is 2/5 (0.400). If you cut out the purple ones and lay them on the red ones there will be very slight gaps that add up to the 1 extra square.

    Reply
  2. To expand on Marine0411’s explanation, the slope on the purple triangle is 3/8, but the slope on the red triangle is 5/13=.385. If you were to magnify the red figure, you would see that the short side of the red triangle is slightly longer than three units, whereas the blue triangle’s short side is exactly three units.

    Reply

Leave a Comment