A brief introduction on Tangram      Among hundreds of dissection (put-together) puzzles, Tangram is surely the most outstanding of all. Tangram originated in China. Nothing is known about its inventor or exactly when the puzzle was invented. But it is known that it was very popular in China from about 1800. The earliest surviving Chinese book on tangrams was published in 1813.      Some say tangrams were traditionally played at home by women and children. Nowadays, the tangram is a puzzle game that can be enjoyed by the entire family. It does not require an inordinate amount of skill. It just requires patience, time and imagination! Anyone with a piece of paper and a set of scissors can enjoy the wonders of tangram, although highly prized tangram sets have been made from delicately carved ivory, tortoise shell and mother-of-pearl.      The challenge of tangram is to arrange seven simple geometrical pieces called tans — two large triangles, two small triangles, a medium triangle, a square and a parallelogram — in all kinds of ways to make silhouettes that represent people, animals, objects or anything else you can think of. Our task is simply to recreate the silhouettes, using all the seven tans without overlapping. However, some experienced puzzle solvers say that people usually overestimate their abilities or underestimate the difficulty of the puzzle at the beginning stage of playing.      According to theories, those who use their left brain more tend to focus on logical thinking, analysis, and accuracy. Those who use the right brain more focus on aesthetics, feeling and creativity. Tangram can foster a more complete mental and aesthetic experience. Accomplished visual-spatial (right-brain) thinkers may find that solving tangrams exercises their logical reasoning abilities. And analytic (left-brain) thinkers may find it enhances their facility in playing with shape, colour and imagination.