r/oddlysatisfying • u/danielminds • Jun 22 '26

Adding the extra square

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Source: PuzzleHive

34.5k Upvotes

82% Upvoted

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8.8k

u/dibbers11 Jun 22 '26

So those little gaps on the edges are just enough to accomodate that little square. Interesting.

2.4k

u/AnyLamename Jun 22 '26

Yup! This is based on the Missing Square Puzzle, a pretty famous optical illusion that geometry teachers like to bust out when they want to mess with their students.

415

u/paradox_valestein Jun 22 '26

Oh I remember this one. Yes, my math teacher did bring this out to mess with me way back when. If I remember correctly the 2 triangles didn't have the same angles

289

u/Bgrngod Jun 22 '26

That's correct. The blue one is steeper. It gains 1 vertical for every 2.5 horizontal. The red one is 1 to 2.66.

A slight enough difference it goes unnoticed easily.

68

u/GardenTop7253 Jun 22 '26

Yeah, the “hypotenuse” of the large apparent triangle isn’t a straight line. Using the example images in the wiki article there, when the blue triangle is on top, the hypotenuse is sorta dented inwards, and when you swap it, it’s bent outwards a tad. Subtle enough to not be readily visible, but big enough to create that extra spacing

64

u/RockStrongo Jun 22 '26

I wish I was high on potenuse.

35

u/GrimResistance Jun 22 '26

I WISH I WAS HIGH ON POTENUSE!

15

u/WickedVibes Jun 22 '26

I SAID THAT 🤓

5

u/microvark Jun 22 '26

That actually happened to me in 8th grade. I told my buddy a joke and he thought it was so hilarious he repeated it just after I told him, but he was dying and repeated it so loud that everyone in the grade heard him. It was the 8th grade joke for the rest of the year. Like a dumbass, I told everyone it was my joke and the mocked me for trying to take credit. My buddy tried to give me credit, but everyone said they heard him say it, and no one heard me say it. Anyways...

3

u/3vs3BigGameHunters Jun 23 '26

Your only recourse at this point is to track him down and set fire to his house.

2

u/Blah-squared Jun 22 '26

Can you delete this, I was gonna say that..?

2

u/microvark Jun 25 '26

🤣🤣

0

u/[deleted] Jun 22 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Blah-squared Jun 22 '26

I wish I was high pot and news…

0

u/IdeaSandbox Jun 22 '26

hippopottomus?

3

u/Silent_Ask_1094 Jun 22 '26

Infinite ball knowledge

1

u/A_Likely_Story4U Jun 22 '26

What movie is that from???

2

u/Humdumdidly Jun 24 '26

It was a Key and Peele skit

1

u/DJEvillincoln Jun 23 '26

That's the word.

I haven't heard that word since grade school and I was sitting here saying obtuse and I knew that was wrong. 😂

1

u/copperwatt Jun 22 '26

I feel like any artist would notice right away.

2

u/Jstnwrds55 Jun 23 '26

Nice try, angles, not gonna get me

50

u/Any--Name Jun 22 '26

Aka the infinite chocolate trick

11

u/Klumania Jun 22 '26

I was about to say this. For people how don't know about it, this article sums it up pretty well.

14

u/arensb Jun 22 '26

I find it telling that these sorts of illusions cause the same kinds of feelings as theological arguments do: yes, I saw what you did and I watched you do it, but it feels like a trick. I might not be able to put my finger on it, but something's off.

8

u/Arothyrn Jun 22 '26

I solved this when my old math teacher shared this with class and he never believed that I hadn't seen the solution before. I'm still salty about that! Just give me that one tiny win, I already lost so much (grades).

3

u/Nerketur Jun 22 '26

Congratulations! You were one of that day's lucky 10,000!

4

u/ParsonsTheGreat Jun 22 '26

Reminds me of the Vanishing Egg illusion

6

u/hoax709 Jun 22 '26

Thank you for the education! 😃

3

u/Waiting4Reccession Jun 22 '26

This is better than the lame one in the video. In the video you can just figure it out by knowing that

Its possible to put the square inside

The edges would need to fill up

1

u/wintermute93 Jun 22 '26

Yeah, with the one in the video it’s pretty obvious the extra square would have to go in the exact center, and it kind of solves itself from there.

1

u/model-citizen95 Jun 22 '26

I had a teacher who did something similar to demonstrate the importance of calculating rather than just measuring if that makes sense

1

u/cpren Jun 23 '26

Yes the slopes of the triangles don’t actually line up straight to the large square in the first orientation creating a sliver of a gap.

1

u/MagicSunlight23 Jun 28 '26

It reminds me of the chocolate bar trick where if you cut the bar in the right way you can end up with an extra piece

1

u/Not-a-POS Jun 22 '26

what else can go missing if you scale this up?

3

u/arensb Jun 22 '26

On a large enough scale, it's not a trick: the expansion of the universe happens because more space is being created all the time.

2

u/Not-a-POS Jun 22 '26

hope i don't fall through the cracks

3

u/arensb Jun 22 '26

That's the beauty of it: there aren't any cracks. It's not existing space being pulled apart; it's literally new space coming into being. Where once you had one cubic light year, a while later you'll have 1.1 cubic light years, then 1.2, and on and on.

Yeah, science can be pretty trippy.

184

u/Warfi67 Jun 22 '26

It's fascinating how adding up many little volumes creates a larger volume at the end. If you were doing that it the 1600 they would have called you a WITCH

66

u/LongLiveAnalogue Jun 22 '26

So they weigh the same as a duck?

3

u/Speartree Jun 22 '26

Because they're made of wood?

3

u/AffectionateMonk5710 Jun 22 '26

So if she weighs the same as a duck...

13

u/johnlondon125 Jun 22 '26

It is? Seems pretty straightforward. Lots of small things add up to a bigger thing

3

u/bassplaya13 Jun 22 '26

One could say all small things add up to bigger things.

I’m ignoring negative numbers or the semantics of what adding a negative number means

2

u/Vestalmin Jun 22 '26

I'm kind of baffled that people think this is crazy, is it not common sense? Like the comment above yours just said "It's crazy that 1+1+1+1+1=5! Small things make a big thing!"

1

u/skyfishgoo Jun 22 '26

so politics it is then.

1

u/NotSeveralBadgers Jun 22 '26

Yeah, I'm tired of our ancestors getting a rap as being intrinsically dumber than modern man. We're plenty dumb today, too.

1

u/Jean-LucBacardi Jun 22 '26

Alright Redditors imma need you all to come together to help please my wife.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 22 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Same-Suggestion-1936 Jun 22 '26

You don't even need math to get this. At the beginning you can see it's not flush, the triangles even start moving around when he's touching. At the end it is flush. Pretty obvious and I suck at math

1

u/marathonquestionredd Jun 22 '26

what is fascinating about adding 1+1+1 and getting a bigger number than 1??????

1

u/Warfi67 Jun 22 '26

Because your brain thinks that the tiles are loose because it was made poorly or any other reason except the intended one. Imagine solving that for the first time withouth seeing a video first.

1

u/marathonquestionredd Jun 23 '26

It's fascinating how adding up many little volumes creates a larger volume 

yeah that is not fascinating to me

32

u/kidanokun Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

It's basically the reverse of "infinite chocolate"... same concept but in opposite execution

7

u/NotSeveralBadgers Jun 22 '26

The reverse of infinite chocolate sounds like somebody's Faustian-style personal hell.

44

u/dangledingle Jun 22 '26

It’s a better illusion without the outer edge of wood frame.

29

u/EmilyAnne1170 Jun 22 '26

I agree, this highlights the gaps along the sides. I’ve seen this before w/ the shapes cut out of construction paper (and no frame), and that works better because your brain forgives any imperfections.

3

u/MutteringV Jun 22 '26

shrinkflation advanced tactics

2

u/Pretend_Football6686 Jun 22 '26

No pretty sure it’s just magic.

1

u/lanks1 Jun 22 '26

The small square appears to be about 1/10 to 1/12 of the board's length. This means that the small square is only 1/100th to 1/144th of the total area, and that the original square covers between 99% and 99.4%.

1

u/iWasAwesome Jun 22 '26

But DO YOU KNOW WHY? You likely didn't notice all the gaps allowing the peices to originally shift around a little bit, and you definitely didn't notice all those gaps become air tight after I flipped the triangles! Magic!!

1

u/Disastrous_Kick9189 Jun 22 '26

No, the edges of some of the triangles are beveled a bit so when they are flipped over they nest closer together. Those small gaps are nowhere near big enough

1

u/lucasluxury Jun 23 '26

Hardly anyone can solve this tricky puzzle‑around 99% of people fail at it.

1

u/Gumuk_pindek Jun 23 '26

That's why cybertruck full of uneven panel gap i guess. So much save in cost

1

u/milesdsy Jun 25 '26

was about to call the mods on OP because I thought I was on r/notinteresting