Wednesday, January 20, 2010

How many squares?

Here's a question to trick a lot of chess fans out there....

How many squares are there on a standard 8 x 8 chessboard?

As you probably figured out, (technically) it's not 64!

8 x 8 squares - 1
7 x 7 squares - 4
6 x 6 squares - 9
5 x 5 squares - 16
4 x 4 squares - 25
3 x 3 squares - 36
2 x 2 squares - 49
1 x 1 squares - 64

Total: 204 squares

For a brief explanation on how to solve for an n x n chessboard, visit http://www.mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/59206.html