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Old 08-05-2010, 05:35 PM   #1
pdurrant
The Grand Mouse 高貴的老鼠
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Posts: 71,483
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Norfolk, England
Device: Kindle Voyage
Carpet Cutting Puzzle

Time for another puzzle. I found this one at a puzzle site in the Netherlands. Despite having a Dutch web address, the site appears to be entirely in English.

Anyway, here's the puzzle:

I have a room that's 9 metres by 12 metres, and I'm going to have an 8 metre by one metre aquarium right in the middle of it (lengthways).

Quickly noticing that the area of open floor will be exactly 100 metres (9x12-8), I buy a 10 metre by 10 metre carpet that was going cheap on eBay. But how to cut it to fit the shape? I don't want to cut the carpet more than necessary. What's the smallest number of pieces I must cut the 10x10 metre carpet into, to make it fit the 12x9 space, with the 8x1 hole in the middle? Hint: It's less than four.

I've attached the picture of the situation take from the above web site.

Answers in
Spoiler:
spoiler tags
if possible, please.

I hope this non-verbal, non-numerical, non-logic puzzle will make a nice change.
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Last edited by pdurrant; 08-07-2010 at 03:11 PM. Reason: Removed unhelpful transparency from the picture. Added upper limit to number of pieces.
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