Dragon Puzzle to Practice Special Right Triangles

Can you conquer this dragon-shaped puzzle using your knowledge of special right triangle relationships?

Looking for more printable geometry puzzles for your classroom? Here’s just a few examples of other geometry puzzles I have shared!

• 
  Angle Loop Puzzles
• 
  Perimeter Puzzles
• 
  Geometry Puzzles
• 
  Sankaku Puzzles (Triangle Area Puzzles)
• 
  Triangular Turkey Puzzle
• 
  Trigonometry Puzzle

Puzzle Source

I originally ran across this dragon puzzle for special right triangles in a scanned PDF of a packet of worksheets that had been uploaded online.

I immediately fell in love with the puzzle because each of the triangles in the dragon shape was a special right triangle. But, there was no source.

After a bit of research, I was able to find the original source. I found the problem in both Windows to Mathematics 10 – An Integrated Approach and McDougal Littell’s Geometry: An Integrated Approach.

Using this Puzzle in the Classroom

I printed the puzzle for students to glue in their trigonometry interactive notebooks.

My students got really involved in this problem, but they really complained about the size.  I downsized it to fit in our notebooks, but there was so much going on in the problem that they soon ran out of room to label sides and angles.  

In the future, I’d do this problem again, but I think I would print the dragon on an 11 x 17 cardstock so students can write ALL over it.

Other Online Versions of This Puzzle

Here are several other online versions of the dragon puzzle that might be of interest to you:

• Dragon Problem Geometry – Has Angles Labeled
• Scribd Dragon Puzzle