The Squares Puzzle

Originally Published on August 2, 2012

A number of my Facebook friends have been posting a puzzle based on the image below.

How many squares can you count in the above image. I count 40. I’ve included several sequences of the puzzle with squares colored in red and yellow to illustrate the ones I see.

First, let’s just count the basic squares across and down.

That gives us 16.

Next, let’s count the little interior squares.

There are 8 of these, bringing us to 24.

There are 2 larger interior squares.

This brings the count to 26.

There are 4 corner squares.

The count is now 30.

The entire puzzle is a square.

Adding 1 to the count, we now have 31 squares.

There are two squares in the middle across the horizontal axis.

This brings the count to 33.

There are two middle squares across the vertical axis.

This brings the count to 35.

There’s 1 square, dead center.

The count is now 36.

The remainder of squares are comprised of nine of the smaller squares. See the four pics below.

This brings the count to 40. I don’t see any others.