Tong Yegeng (1828–1899), who also went by his sobriquet of "Recluse in a Minor Mountain," was a 19th century Chinese scholar-official. Later on in his life, he immersed himself in the study of Chinese calligraphy, painting and seal carving, living as a hermit after being framed and stripped of his official title. Inspired by the seven-piece tangram puzzle, he invented a new dissection of the square into fifteen pieces. He named this new puzzle "Intelligence-Enhancing Diagrams" after initially sharing the puzzle with his friends. In 1878, Tong Yegeng published two collections of his fifteen-piece tangram puzzle constructions, respectively entitled
Enhancing Intelligence Diagrams and
Additional Enhancing Intelligence Diagrams. These were followed by the publication of a volume on
Enhancing Intelligence Banquet Table Diagrams, i.e.
The Fifteen-Tangram Book in 1890. He then began to work on a project of using the fifteen pieces to form hundreds of Chinese characters, which led to the publication of
Enhancing Intelligence Diagrams of One Thousand Characters.
Tong Yegeng (1828–1899), who also went by his sobriquet of "Recluse in a Minor Mountain," was a 19th century Chinese scholar-official. Later on in his life, he immersed himself in the study of Chinese calligraphy, painting and seal carving, living as a hermit after being framed and stripped of his official title. Inspired by the seven-piece tangram puzzle, he invented a new dissection of the square into fifteen pieces. He named this new puzzle "Intelligence-Enhancing Diagrams" after initially sharing the puzzle with his friends. In 1878, Tong Yegeng published two collections of his fifteen-piece tangram puzzle constructions, respectively entitled Enhancing Intelligence Diagrams and Additional Enhancing Intelligence Diagrams. These were followed by the publication of a volume on Enhancing Intelligence Banquet Table Diagrams, i.e. The Fifteen-Tangram Book in 1890. He then began to work on a project of using the fifteen pieces to form hundreds of Chinese characters, which led to the publication of Enhancing Intelligence Diagrams of One Thousand Characters.