Twisted Square

Geometry Level 4

A black square and a red square inside it have blue lines connecting their vertices.

The black square has a side length of 271 271 while the blue connecting lines have lengths 155 , 205 , 245 , 205 \; 155, \; 205, \; 245, \; 205 \; as shown. The red square has an integer side length s s

Find the smallest s s such that all the vertices the black square and the red square have integer coordinates, assuming that the sides of the black square are parallel to x , y x,y axes.

Special thanks to Jon Haussmann for his timely assistance


The answer is 41.

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1 solution

Chew-Seong Cheong
Mar 17, 2020

Let the bottom left vertex of the black square be the origin O ( 0 , 0 ) O(0,0) of the x y xy -plane. Label the red square A B C D ABCD as shown. Since the coordinates of A A , B B , C C , and D D are integers, we can find them using Pythagorean theorem .

Using a simple Python code as shown above (using the Coding environment of Brilliant.org), it is found that the only possible coordinates of C C are ( 124 , 93 ) (124,93) . Similarly, the only possible coordinates of A A are ( 75 , 124 ) (75,124) . We note that A C = 2 s AC = \sqrt 2 s , where s s is the side length of the red square. Then 2 s = ( 124 75 ) 2 + ( 93 124 ) 2 = 41 2 \sqrt 2s=\sqrt{(124-75)^2+(93-124)^2} = 41\sqrt 2 s = 41 \implies s = \boxed{41} .

The vertices that give a side length of 41 41 are A ( 75 , 124 ) A(75,124) , B ( 115 , 133 ) B(115,133) , C ( 124 , 93 ) C(124,93) , and D ( 84 , 84 ) D(84,84) .

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