Parts of a Whole – An Equilateral Triangle Puzzle

Assemble the five provided shapes to form an equilateral triangle in this tricky puzzle called “Parts of a Whole.”

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 Instructions

The Parts of a Whole Puzzle gives students five shapes that must be arranged to form a triangle whose three sides are of equal length. In other words, form an equilateral triangle.

I would have renamed this as the Equilateral Triangle Puzzle, but I have already shared a different equilateral triangle puzzle on my blog before. That puzzle was slightly different in that the pieces were different colors, and there were restrictions regarding colors touching.

Puzzle Source

I found this puzzle in The Ultimate Clever Puzzle Book. I borrowed it for free from the Internet Archive’s Online Lending Library.

This is a great way to check out puzzle books to see if they have enough puzzles you might be interested in before purchasing them.

Using this Puzzle in the Classroom

I posted this in my classroom several weeks ago alongside 8 other puzzles. It didn’t get quite the attention that some of the other puzzles did.

Instead of solving the Parts of a Whole Puzzle, students tended to just see what kind of pictures they could make with the pieces. You can see a rocket ship that one student created above.

I wouldn’t recommend putting out so many puzzles at once. I normally only have one puzzle up at a time. I couldn’t use my magnetic puzzles for so much of the school year due to COVID-precautions.

So, when restrictions lifted, I might have gone a bit puzzle crazy…