2026-07-12 · history
Tangram (Qi Qiao Ban) — Around 1810, Seven Pieces of Lies and Truth
Seven shapes, five triangles, one square, one parallelogram, enough to form countless silhouettes. The tangram's origin lies in late-18th-century China, but its history was long distorted by a fabricated chronicle puzzle maker Sam Loyd wrote in 1903. I dig up both the toy's true voyage and the fiction that obscured it.