Lucas Bachmann

The solution to the previous puzzle can be found here.

If you’ve missed any of the story so far, you can catch up on all of the puzzles here.

“Sir, we’ve discovered a square piece of paper in one of the suspect’s pockets.” one of the officers reported, brandishing a yellow weathered piece of paper.

“Hmm, interesting”. Bernoulli carefully analysed the square piece of paper. “It appears to have some sort of writing on it”.

“What do you make of it?” asked Hansel, peering over Bernoulli’s shoulder.

“Not much, maybe we should ask our suspects.”

After half an hour, they managed to get this statement:

“What you’re supposed to do is cut this square piece of paper into four pieces, so that the pieces form two squares of different size. Then, if we place the smaller of the two squares on top of the bigger one, with the corners of the small square on each of the red dots, and hold it up to the light, there should be a map revealing the location of the hideout. The small square should have the two black triangles in opposite corners, and the big square should have the four red dots.”

“Alright, but first things first, can we cut this square into four pieces to make two smaller squares of different size?”

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Solution

After brandishing a pair of scissors, the detective set out to make the following cuts, noticing that if the map was considered as a square of five unit length, then he could create two smaller squares of length four units and three units, thanks to Pythagoras’ theorem.

He then recombined the pieces as follows, to get the two squares:

After which, he placed one square on top of the other, and after raising the map to the sunlight, he could see a clear map of the harbour, with one building marked with an x:

“Aha!” cried Hansel, “That is rather brilliant!”

“Indeed” replied Bernoulli “but not brilliant enough. Now we know our next destination.”