Solution 16

The areas are not actually triangles! You can even see this in the figure if you look carefully! Another way to see it is to consider similar triangles. The perpendicular sides in the big "triangles" are 13 and 5 units. The corresponding sides in the green and red sub triangles are 5 and 2 for the green and 8 and 3 for the red.

But 13/5 is not equal to 5/2 or 8/3 as it should be in similar triangles!
The areas are almost triangular in shape and that is the tricky thing here!
 
 

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Last updated: 2003-05-08 by Ingvar Jönsson