May 25, 2026
Right angle? More like messy angle
Squares in Squares
Math fans turned square-packing into a tiny-shape soap opera
TLDR: This site catalogs the best-known ways to pack tiny squares into one bigger square, and some layouts are still unsolved — especially 11. Commenters turned that into a mix of challenge mode, pattern-obsession, and jokes about deceptively simple designs hiding monster math.
A website showing the smallest known big square that can fit different numbers of little unit squares should, in theory, be calm nerd heaven. Instead, the comment section turned it into a delightful mini-drama about obsession, beauty, and who did the "boring work." The project itself is a giant visual catalog of how to cram as many same-size squares as possible into one larger square, complete with drag-and-drop editing, zoom tools, and a gloriously addictive triangular table view. For most numbers up to 324, the plain old straight-grid layout is still best known, but some entries go gloriously weird with tilted pieces and complicated math.
That weirdness is exactly what the crowd latched onto. One commenter dropped the challenge bomb: 11 is the smallest case that still hasn’t been proven best, instantly giving puzzle lovers a new white whale. Another got hypnotized by the table itself, saying it looked like the periodic table and wondering if there are hidden “families” of solutions like “diamond” or “two blobs” — which is the kind of wholesome pattern-hunting that sends math forums into a spiral. Then came the sass: one user shrugged that Hiroshi Nagamochi did all the boring work, while another crowned entry 130 the drama queen of the gallery: it looks simple, then suddenly screams, “SIKE, here’s 8-degree polynomial!” In other words, the internet has decided this isn’t just geometry — it’s reality TV for squares.
Key Points
- •The article documents best-known packings of n unit squares inside the smallest known enclosing square of side length s.
- •If a picture label contains multiple numbers, the displayed arrangement corresponds to the largest n and smaller cases are formed by removing squares.
- •For values of n up to 324 that are not pictured, the article says the trivial non-tilted packing is the best known solution.
- •Cases where s is known only as a polynomial root of degree 3 or higher are marked with a lock icon that reveals the polynomial-root form.
- •The page provides interactive SVG tools, including edit mode, keyboard controls, zoom options, and links to survey research on the problem.