H Puzzle from Harry Lindgren

This week, my students have been taking turns tackling this tricky H Puzzle. The goal of the puzzle is to arrange the six given pieces to form a symmetric letter H. The pieces may not overlap one another in the final configuration.

If you like puzzles like this, I have previously shared the T Puzzle and the M Puzzle.

This H Puzzle is the creation of Harry Lindgren and was originally featured in his Geometric Dissections book. I flipped through this book, and I was blown away by the mathematical process used to create puzzles like this.

Wow. Just wow. If you’re interested in the mathematics of geometric puzzle creation, put this book on your list to check out.

I learned of the puzzle via ThinkFun’s now defunct puzzles website. Thankfully an archived version still exists thanks to the Internet Archive. I used this file to create my own jumbo pieces.

I placed disc magnets on the back of each piece and hung the puzzle on my dry erase board. I encouraged students to use hand sanitizer after playing with the puzzles.

Many of my students thought that this puzzle was more challenging than the M Puzzle and T Puzzle since it has six pieces and the other puzzles only have four pieces.

In the past, I have also used a slightly different H puzzle from DIY Puzzles.