Seven Cunning Pieces

What are the ‘Seven Cunning Pieces’?

Seven Cunning Pieces (‘qi qiao ban’) is a Chinese puzzle or ‘tangram’ made up of seven simple geometric pieces (‘tans’)

An interesting legend about the ancient origins of the Chinese tangram can be found at the Archimedes’ Laboratory website, though it has been suggested that the puzzle is actually more recent, and may only be about 200 hundred years old.

Below is an example of a tangram puzzle: a shape is presented (in this case a dragon), and the player must try to recreate the shape starting from the basic tangram layout (a square or rectangle).

The solution to the dragon’s head tangram from Dragon Moon

In Dragon Moon, Ping must solve a very special tangram to help her complete her quest.

Below is the completed dragon’s head that Lady An makes from the Seven Cunning Pieces in Dragon Moon. Click here to see how the puzzle was solved.

Make your own tangrams

You can find more puzzles (and solutions) at websites such as www.tangrams.ca and www.creativepuzzels.nl.

To make your own ‘seven cunning pieces’ so you can try some puzzles for yourself, download the PDF from the link below, then print it out and cut along the dotted lines.

Make your own tangram
(1mb PDF)

The PDF includes a couple of sample puzzles for you to try — but there are many more puzzles just waiting to be discovered...