Embedded Figures Puzzles
A simple shape goes into a tangle of lines and vanishes. It is still there, drawn exactly as it was — but its edges have become parts of longer lines, so there is no outline left to see. Sixty patterns, and after every attempt the shape is traced out corner by corner, with the missing edge named in each figure that failed.
Also known as hidden figures, find the hidden shape and figure embedding.
Finding A Shape Hidden Inside A Busier One
An embedded figures puzzle hides a simple shape inside a more complicated one and asks you to find where it is. The hidden shape may be turned or mirrored, but it is never resized or distorted — so every line of the target has to appear, at full length, somewhere in the larger figure.
What Makes A Shape Disappear
An embedded figures question is not a spot-the-difference. The hidden shape is not drawn on top of the figure, or shaded, or nested neatly inside it. It is drawn with the figure’s own lines. Every edge of the target is a stretch of some line that carries on past it, so at the moment the shape would become visible — at its corners — the lines keep going and the outline dissolves.
That is the single mechanic worth understanding, because it is also the commonest reason people get these wrong. A solver looks for a square and rejects a figure because it has no square in it — no four lines that stop at four corners. But a square whose four edges are middle sections of four long lines is still a square, and it is the answer.
The Rule For Whether An Edge Is There
One test settles every case: an edge counts as present when it is drawn, even as part of something longer. It does not need its own endpoints. It does not need a corner. It needs ink along its whole length, in exactly the right place, at exactly the right angle.
The reverse matters just as much. Two short lines with a gap between them do not make one long edge, however close the gap. If a hair’s breadth of the edge is missing, the shape is not there — and on this site that is decided by geometry rather than by eye, which is why the explanation can tell you precisely which edge failed and where.
How To Search A Figure Properly
Scanning the whole picture hoping the shape jumps out is slow and unreliable. The method that works is to search from a distinctive feature instead:
- Pick the most unusual edge of the target. A sloping edge beats a horizontal one; a long edge beats a short one. The rarer it is, the fewer places it can sit.
- Find every place that edge could be in the figure, remembering that it may be part of a longer line. There are usually only two or three.
- Build the rest of the shape outwards from each candidate. Most die on the second or third edge, which takes a moment.
- Check the orientations the pattern allows before moving on. If turning is allowed you have four ways up to try; if mirroring is allowed as well, eight.
Counting lines is not a shortcut. A figure with more lines is not more likely to hide the shape, and the crowded patterns here exist specifically to punish that assumption.
Turned, Mirrored, And Never Resized
Each pattern states how the shape may have been laid down before being hidden, and the board shows you which pattern you are on. Three rules are in use:
- Same way up — the shape appears exactly as drawn. One orientation to check.
- Turned — a quarter, half or three-quarter turn is allowed. Four orientations.
- Turned or mirrored — all eight positions count, and a mirrored copy is still the shape.
What never changes is size. The shape is never scaled up or down, and never stretched along one axis, so every edge keeps its exact length and every corner its exact angle. A figure containing a shape of the right form but the wrong size does not contain the target — and that is a genuine trap, not an oversight.
The Three Question Types
The same geometry is asked about in three ways, and the third is much harder than it looks:
- Which figure contains the shape? The standard form. One target, four figures, one of them hiding it.
- Which figure does not contain it? Reversed, and far slower — finding one hit tells you nothing, so all four figures have to be searched before you can answer.
- Which shape is hidden in this figure? One figure, four candidate shapes. The elimination runs the other way: you are testing candidates against a fixed picture.
| Question | What you do | What decides it |
|---|---|---|
| Which figure contains this shape? | Search each option for the target | Every edge of the target must be covered by drawn ink |
| Which shape is hidden in this figure? | Search the figure for each candidate | The same test, run the other way round |
| Which option does NOT contain it? | Find the one where an edge is missing | Exactly one option has had its ink cut |
| Size | Never changes | The target is never scaled — only turned or mirrored |
| Orientation | Does change | Every rotation and reflection is searched |
Why Hiding A Shape Is Harder Than It Sounds
Removing a shape from a figure is not a matter of erasing one copy of it. Draw enough lines and accidental second copies appear constantly — elsewhere in the picture, or rotated, or mirrored. A two-edge target like an L or a cross turns up by chance almost every time. So each wrong option here is re-searched across the whole symmetry group and every possible shift, and any surviving copy is cut too, until the search comes back empty. Cutting only ever removes ink, so the process always finishes.
Because the answer here is decided by an exhaustive search rather than by a setter’s eye, every generated question has exactly one defensible answer — including the crowded ones, where an accidental second copy of the shape would otherwise creep in unnoticed.
Embedded Figures Puzzles Frequently Asked Questions
Is the hidden shape always exactly the same size?
Yes. It may be turned, and in some patterns mirrored, but it is never resized or stretched. Every edge keeps its length and every corner its angle, which is what makes the search finite: there are at most eight orientations and a limited number of positions to try.
Can an edge of the shape be part of a longer line?
Yes, and it usually is. That is the mechanic the whole item type is built on. Never reject a figure because its lines run past the corners of the shape — check whether the ink is there along the edge, not whether the line stops.
Why is “which figure does not contain it” so much slower?
Because you cannot stop early. In the standard form, finding the shape means you are done. In the reversed form, finding the shape only eliminates one option, so every figure has to be searched in every allowed orientation before the answer is safe.
What if I can see a different shape that also fits?
On these puzzles you should not be able to. Each wrong figure is checked by an exhaustive search over every allowed orientation and every position before it ships, and any accidental copy of the target is removed rather than hoped over. If a wrong option merely comes close, the explanation says exactly how close and which edge is missing.
How many puzzles are there?
The 60 patterns above each generate an unlimited number of puzzles, drawn fresh from a seed every time. Every puzzle keeps a permanent link, so one you want to come back to can be saved or shared.
What is an embedded figures question?
You are shown a simple shape and then a set of more complicated line figures. Exactly one of those figures has the simple shape drawn inside it, and your job is to find which. The hidden shape is never redrawn separately inside the figure — its edges are lines the figure already has, which is why it disappears so completely.
Can the figure's lines be longer than the shape's edges?
Yes, and this is the whole difficulty. An edge of the shape counts as present when it is drawn, even as part of a longer line that runs straight past the corner. So you must never rule out a figure because its lines do not stop where the shape stops. A square hidden inside a grid is the clearest example: all four of its edges are stretches of much longer lines, and only the corners tell you it is there.
How should I search a complex figure?
Start from the most unusual edge of the target rather than the most obvious one — a sloping edge at an odd angle, or the longest edge, since both narrow the search fast. Find every place that edge could sit in the figure, then try to build the rest of the shape outwards from each one. Working from a distinctive feature turns a search of the whole picture into a handful of small checks.
What other names does this question type have?
The same item is set as embedded figures, hidden figures and figure embedding in Indian competitive reasoning papers, as find the hidden shape, and as figure embedding. The Embedded Figures Test used in psychology research is a related but separate instrument.
Does the hidden shape have to be the same way up?
No. The shape may be turned or mirrored inside the larger figure, but it is never resized. A quarter turn is enough to make an L look completely unfamiliar, which is exactly why these are harder than they first appear.