Generalization of Haberdasher's puzzle (Q2408185)

In this article, the generalization of Haberdasher's puzzle is proposed. The history of the remarkable problem which was called ``Haberdasher's problem'' goes back to May, 17 1905. On that day, Henry E. Dudeney presented the following problem to the Royal Society: dissect an equilateral triangle into pieces and rearrange them to form a square without gaps and overlapping. This simple definition conceals the problem which has been of great interest to researchers for more than a century of its development. Despite the long research period the formal language of the problem statement has not been given yet. That is why the authors have to describe facts on the basis of many figures and observations. The authors carefully do it with the concern for the readers and give preferences to visibility rather than to mathematical rigour. The first section of the paper acquaints the reader with the basic notions of the problem in a quite fascinating way. In particular, the definition of \(n\)-equirotational figures is given here with the basis on Haberdasher's puzzle. In the second section, the results obtained earlier by the authors in collaboration with S. Langerman are presented -- as well as some corollaries of the known results. In the third section, the notions of tessellability and strong tessellability for equirotational figures are introduced and the following assertions are proved. 1. Let \(P\) be an equirotational figure with a triangular trunk \(T\). Then, \(P\) is strong tessellative if and only if \(T\) is either a half of an equilateral triangle or an isosceles right triangle or an equilateral triangle (see Theorem 3.3). 2. Let \(P\) be an equirotational figure with a convex \(n\)-gonal trunk \(T\) , where \( n\geq 4\) , and its conjugate trunk \( T'\). Then, \(P\) is strong tessellative if and only if both \(T\) and \( T'\) are identical parallelograms (see Theorem 3.4). In the theorems of the fourth section, the relation between the notions of uni-trunk holders and Conway tiles is ascertained. Let us formulate the main results of this section. (I) Let \(P\) be a uni-trunk holder, then \(P\) is a Conway tile (see Theorem 4.1). (II) Let \(P\) and \(Q\) be uni-trunk holders. \(P\) is 4-equi-rotational to \(Q\) if a 4-base of \( P\) forms a parallelogram which is identical to the one which is formed by a 4-base of \( Q \) ( see Theorem 4.2). In the last section, the definition of Conway polygons is given. The figures of this section provide the types of Conway polygons. In Theorem 5.1, the following assertion is formulated: every Conway polygon P is a uni-trunk holder. The proof of Theorem 5.1 is produced only for one type of Conway polygons namely for a non-house pentagon. In the final theorem of the paper, it is proved that for any Conway polygon there exists a Conway polygon which is 4-equi-rotational to the given polygon.