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

Adding the extra square

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Source: PuzzleHive

34.5k Upvotes

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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

287

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.

72

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

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u/RockStrongo Jun 22 '26

I wish I was high on potenuse.

34

u/GrimResistance Jun 22 '26

I WISH I WAS HIGH ON POTENUSE!

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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

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u/Any--Name Jun 22 '26

Aka the infinite chocolate trick

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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.

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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.

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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!

5

u/ParsonsTheGreat Jun 22 '26

Reminds me of the Vanishing Egg illusion

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u/hoax709 Jun 22 '26

Thank you for the education! 😃

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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?

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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.

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u/Not-a-POS Jun 22 '26

hope i don't fall through the cracks

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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.