Egg of Columbus (tangram puzzle)

The Egg of Columbus is a dissection puzzle produced by the German toy manufacturer Richter, consisting of a flat, egg-shaped outline cut by straight lines into nine or ten separate pieces. As with a tangram, the solver's task is to rearrange the full set of pieces, using every one of them, into other specific target shapes, most often silhouettes of animals or other recognizable figures shown on accompanying puzzle cards. The design carries a complication not found in a standard tangram: two of the pieces, distinguished by their turquoise color, are not bilaterally symmetrical, so some target shapes can only be completed by physically flipping one of those two pieces face down, rather than only rotating or sliding it. Richter's original production of the puzzle ended in 1963, and after decades out of manufacture it returned to production again at the start of the twenty-first century. The puzzle's name recalls the old story of Columbus and the egg, in which a seemingly impossible feat turns out to have a simple solution once seen.