How Many Squares Do You See in This Puzzle?
Updated: Mar. 15, 2024
How many squares do you see? Hint: There are way more than meets the eye!
Sometimes the most seemingly simple tasks can turn out to be the most complicated. While that’s a frustrating fact of life in general, it does make for some fun brain teasers! Take this puzzle that’s been making the rounds on WhatsApp, challenging you to do something that seems laughably simple: Count the squares. It might seem a whole lot simpler than these tricky math riddles and logic puzzles, but it will make you think for sure!
WhatsApp is a chat app that allows users to make calls, video calls, and text conversations. People have been using WhatsApp, like many social media apps, to stay in touch during the pandemic—and, of course, to send each other all manner of Internet silliness. WhatsApp itself has a variety of puzzles and brainteaser images, and one of them surged in perplexing popularity at the beginning of the pandemic lockdown. See if you can solve it!
The puzzle challenges you to correctly identify the number of squares in this grid. In case your memory of middle school geometry is a little fuzzy, a square is a shape with four sides of equal length. So a four-sided shape with different-sized sides does not count.
It seems pretty easy at first, but don’t forget you have to account for squares that overlap each other, squares within squares, big squares, and little squares. It’s trickier than you think (just like this viral duck riddle). If finding hidden words is more your thing, see how you handle these rebus puzzles and math puzzles.
How Many Squares Do You See?
Ready for the answer?
All told, there are 40 squares hiding in plain sight here. Didn’t find that many? Take a look below to see them all highlighted, or give it another try. Don’t forget that while the big square comprises 16 of the medium-sized squares, you can make squares with combos of four and nine medium squares.
Ready to boggle your brain even more? The Internet can’t figure out how many triangles are in this figure, either. Or test your perception skills with more challenging visual brain teasers.
Originally Published: February 12, 2020
