Tangram puzzle deck / Portraits Cubiques. Unknown, France. Bespoke gaming deck, 18 single-headed cards. Size: 82mm x 125mm.
Deck make-up:
Cards: 18 cards featuring tangram puzzles (see below for full set).
Here are some cards based on the puzzle known as "tangram". A tangram is a square (which can be made of paper, card, wood, plastic etc.) cut into seven smaller shapes (called "tans") as shown below. As you can see, the set of tans are: two large triangles, one medium triangle, two small triangles, a square, and a parallelogram (the parallelogram is the only piece which isn't symmetrical, so you are allowed to flip it over to its other side as needed).
The puzzle-solver is given an outline or silhouette of a recognisable shape (an object, person or animal etc.) made up of all the tans but without showing their individual outlines. An example is the black crab below. The puzzle is to move your tans around to figure out which go where to make the composite shape. The solution for the crab example is also shown below. Despite the apparent simplicity of the problem, tangram puzzles are often quite fiendishly difficult. You'll notice the crab example has a mirror image along its vertical centre line but each half isn't (and indeed can't be) made up of the same arrangement of tans.
Alternatively, if you find all that too taxing, you can just use the pieces to make your own design.
The tangram is Chinese in origin although it isn't known exactly when it was invented. In China, one can buy puzzle books containing dozens of small black silhouettes to be solved, available in the same way that books and magazines of wordsearches, crosswords and Sudokus are.
This pack has four tangram problems to each card. For the main shapes on the cards, caricatures of well-known people from French history have been added (or should I say, shoehorned) into the outlines (which actually makes the puzzles more difficult!) For example, the "Le Cardinal de Joyuese" is François de Joyeuse, a churchman and politician born in 1562. "Le Maréchal de Brissac" is Charles de Cossé, a courtier and soldier born 1505. And so on.
The museum who owns the pack (La Bibliothèque Nationale De France) has dubbed it: "Jeu de cartes dit 'des portraits cubiques'," which means, "Game of cards called 'cubic portraits' ," without mentioning the tangram aspect at all. They date it to sometime between 1800 and 1830, publisher and artist unknown.
Click on any card to explore the design.
(Comments or corrections, please e-mail: Click to see e-mail address.)
Card image size, below: