[Origin obscure: second element app. -GRAM.] The name given to a Chinese geometrical puzzle consisting of a square dissected into five triangles, a square, and a rhomboid, which can be combined so as to make two equal squares, and also so as to form several hundred figures, having a rude resemblance to houses, boats, bottles, glasses, urns, birds, beasts, men, etc.
(The Chinese name is Ch’i Ch’iao t’u ‘seven ingenious plan.’ The name tangram seems to have been given in England, or perhaps in U.S., but some have conjectured for the first element Chinese t’an ‘to extend,’ or t’ang commonly used in Canton for ‘Chinese.’ Others have conjectured Tan to be the name of the inventor; but no such person is known to Chinese scholars.)
1864. Webster, Tangram, a Chinese toy made by cutting a square of thin wood, or [the like] into seven pieces.
1874. [see PUZZLE sb. 3 b].
1908. H. E. Dudeney, Tales with Tangrams, in Strand Mag., Nov., 581. It is probable that Tangrams were originally designed not as a pastime, but as a means of instruction…. Professor Max Müller said that ‘the science of Tangrams gave evidence of a higher state of civilization than now exists in China.’
