Take 14 toothpicks, and arrange 12 of them to form the shape shown below.
Challenges
Move two toothpicks in the arrangement and add the two extra toothpicks
to make:
- Two congruent triangles, two congruent parallelograms, and an irregular pentagon.
- Two congruent triangles, two congruent parallelograms, and a trapezoid.
- Two congruent triangles, two congruent parallelograms, and two congruent hexagons.
- Three congruent triangles and two congruent trapezoids.
- Three congruent triangles and two non-congruent parallelograms.
- Three congruent triangles, two congruent hexagons, and a trapezoid.
- Four congruent triangles and an irregular hexagon.
- Four congruent triangles and two congruent parallelograms.
- Five congruent triangles and a parallelogram.
- Exactly six congruent triangles.
- Six triangles, not all congruent, and two congruent parallelograms.
- Seven triangles, not all congruent, and a trapezoid.
Sketch each solution you discover on the back of this paper. There may be multiple solutions for several of the challenges.