To a certain extent the Chinese Tangram resembles the Western jigsaw puzzle, but it differs from the jigsaw in always having the same number of pieces, which are fitted together in different ways to make a large number of different shapes. The seven pieces of the Tangram are formed from a square. The idea is to use the pieces to construct certain figures. These may be geometrical -- such as a triangle, trapezium or parallelogram -- or representational -- human figures running, sitting, falling, playing, dancing, fish swimming, cats or pigs lying down, bridges, shops, houses, etc. This book contains about 1,600 illustrations of different figures all of which can be formed from the Tangram pieces. Of these, 750 were devised by the present compilers; the remainder are from ancient Chinese or from European sources.

After a very brief introduction and bibliography, this consists almost entirely of pictures of possible shapes formed by the tangram, without captions. ( )