Exercise #3

VISUAL PUZZLES:

The objective of this first puzzle is to determine the number of triangles are contained within this graphic arranged to look like a cat. This particular puzzle was done with my current housmate Terena and her strategy was naturally to carefully count out all of the triangles that might not be too apparent at first glance such as the triangles that are formed by partitioning off a larger triangle. By carefully counting them out without recounting any triangles, she came up with the correct answer: 20 triangles.

I basically utilized the same general strategy as Terena did, just taking care to make sure that I counted them all. However, the main difference in what I did was that I tended to group the shapes off by proximity or color. For example, I counted the two red ears at the top because to me, they seemed to be part of a unit. The same idea went when I sectioned off the eyes. This allowed me to add up the sum of these groupings into the correct answer: 20.

This next puzzle is fairly simple, but still somewhat tricky at the same time. The instructions stated that one of the two swirls was actually just one line joined at the ends while the other was two separate lines also joined at their respective ends. The only thing I could really think of to do was once again, just look carefully. By following the line as best I could, I determined that the swirl to the left was really the continuous individual line.

From what I could tell, Terena essentially did about the same thing, checking both swirls to determine which one was singular and which was separate. What made this task trick for both of us was that the proximity of the lines to each other combined with the fact that the closure of the loops used to make the swirls seemed to create an inner white swirl as well, made the lines seem to meld together making it difficult to properly identify which line one was following. Nevertheless, with a little bit of persistence, both of us were able to ascertain the right answer.