What is the answer to the 9 dot puzzle?
What is the answer to the 9 dot puzzle?
The 9 Dots Problem The problem is to connect the dots with no more than 4 straight lines without lifting your hand from the paper. First attempts are always frustrating. For one always comes up with 5 lines instead of 4. The solution lies in the observation that it’s permissible to cross square boundaries.
What is the 9 dot challenge?
The nine-dot problem (Maier, 1930) requires that nine dots arranged in a square be connected by four straight lines drawn without lifting the pen from the paper and without retracing any lines (Figure 1).
How do you beat the nine dots puzzle?
To solve the problem, you need to join all nine dots by drawing no more than four straight lines. The straight lines must be continuous – i.e. you must not lift your pen from the paper once you start drawing. Don’t read any further until you’ve tried to solve the problem.
Can you join all nine dots with four straight lines without taking your pencil off the paper?
Your task is to join all nine dots using only four (or less) straight lines, without lifting your pencil from the paper and without retracing the lines. Yet another solution is to fold the paper in three, so the rows of dots all line up, and fold it again and poke the pencil through!
How do you connect the 9 dot puzzle?
The solution involves looking outside the two-dimensional sheet of paper on which the nine dots are drawn and coning the paper three-dimensionally aligning the dots along a spiral, thus a single line can be drawn connecting all nine dots – which would appear as three lines in parallel on the paper, when flattened out.
How do you connect all the dots in the 9 dots puzzle?
In this puzzle, you must connect all the dots using only 4 straight lines; without lifting the pencil (ie: new lines must be connected to the previous one). Each line can be as long or as short as you like; and a dot may be crossed by multiple lines. Click anywhere on the board to set endpoint of the lines.
What was the lesson of the Nine Dot Problem?
Of course, the line is so long that it circles the earth twice but it is straight nonetheless and solves the puzzle successfully. So perhaps the greatest lesson of the nine dot problem is not to “think outside the box” but rather, that when it comes to truly creative problem solving, there is no box.
How many straight lines do you need to draw to connect 9 dots?
The goal of the puzzle (left) is to link all 9 dots using four straight lines or fewer, without lifting the pen and without tracing the same line more than once. All such answers (one example shown right) require the solver to draw a line that extends outside of the “box” formed by the grid.
When was the first nine dot puzzle published?
The first known publication was in Sam Loyd’s classic Cyclopedia of Puzzles, 1914. Though, in a 1959 compendium of Sam Loyd’s work, Martin Gardner described this particular puzzle as a “classic geometrical challenge” so the nine dots likely predate Loyd’s eggs.