By Michael Hartley
I saw this puzzle in a puzzle book. It was originally invented by a man called Sam Loyd, who lived from 1841 until 1911. His puzzle were always accompanied by a story (always fictional) about the puzzle.
In the puzzle I've chosen here, a chessboard has been broken into eight pieces. The task? To join the pieces together to form a chessboard (that is, a checkers, or draughts board). The picture here shows one of the pieces - all the pieces are different, and there's supposed to be only one way to solve the puzzle. It's quite challenging!
I've made up two sets of pieces you can print and cut out - and then try the puzzle! There's
- A set of jigsaw pieces on one page, or if you prefer,
- a larger set of pieces, on four pages.
You can get more mathematical puzzles by Sam Loyd from amazon.com