Mathematical puzzle

Mathematical puzzle

The rules

• The puzzle is a hexagon of twenty-four small equilateral triangles, and six pieces of four triangles each that fill it exactly.
• Press Shuffle to scatter the pieces round the table. Drag a piece to move it, and tap it to turn it by sixty degrees. A piece snaps to the triangle grid when you let go.
• The hexagon is whole when every triangle is covered, with no gaps and no pieces overlapping.
• Making it once is hard enough. The greater challenge is to find three different ways of putting the pieces together into a hexagon.
• A puzzle in the spirit of Leonardo da Vinci, who kept his mind sharp with geometrical problems. Put together it looks easy; scattered, it asks a lot of your eye for shape.

In this version

• The hexagon is three rhombi meeting at the centre, like the faces of a cube. Each rhombus is cut into two interlocking halves of four triangles, and those are the six pieces.
• The app counts every new way you make the hexagon whole, so you can see when you have found three. A solution that is only the whole figure turned round counts as the same one.
• Show a solution puts the pieces in place for you.