A tangram (pronounced tan-gram – tricky, eh?) is something which used to amuse and frustrate me as a child. It is a square divided up into the following: five isosceles triangles, one square and one parallelogram. My first introduction to these was thanks to the Kellogg’s corporation, who thoughtfully inserted one into my packet of Corn Flakes. The individual tiles are known as ‘tans’.
The name is quite new – first used by the American, Thomas Hill, in book on children’s geometry puzzles in 1848. The name comes from Tang (the Chinese dynasty) and gram (Greek – gramma – meaning “written or recorded”). The original Chinese name for the puzzle is “qi-qiao-ban“, meaning “seven boards of cunning”. You’re on your own pronouncing that one.
The fun bit of it is that these shapes can be used to make many others resembling, for example, a person skating, a duck or a swan. The number of shapes is mathematically infinite but in reality is finite but huge.
If my blogging skills have improved, you will see a picture to accompany this article which may explain it better than I have.
If you want to try it for yourself, the marvels of the Internet mean you can have a go here.
Tags: Internet mean, Kellogg, Thomas Hill
I loved these games.
I avoid learning the Chines names as they always sound that someone has to be humiliated and die if the game isn’t played to its highest standard.
I had a Chinese friend at college. He tried to get me to say “you are beautiful” and “I love you” when sitting with a group of his Chinese female friends. Whatever it was that I did say sure wasn’t that. Needless to say I didn’t score myself any oriental lovin’. That’s just the language. The games are even worse!
Γραμμή means line and γράμμα means letter. Funnily enough, gramma is also the alteration of grandma… the marvels of the Internet, I couldn’t agree more, and yes indeed, I had much fun with the tangram tonight, many thanks.
(On another topic: theat, somthing and subscripsion; I’m afraid you owe me at least 3 x 3 euro cents)
An Tang grandma – now she’d be pretty old, wouldn’t she? On the subject of money, my plan for world domination comes together! I reckon if I keep doing this until the language runs out of words, I’ll have made around €18.52…
[...] tangram « Word Du Jour – tangram. A tangram (pronounced tan-gram – tricky, eh?) is something which used to amuse and frustrate me as a child. It is a square divided up into the following: five isosceles triangles, one square and one parallelogram. … [...]