Ohio’s flag has no square corners – and not one pointy end, like a pennant, but two.
Even a road map has four 90-degree corners to work with. As do the flags of each and every one of the 49 other states, by the way.
It is quite a challenge.
Particularly when you consider the rules that Weinstock established for the brain teaser. The procedure would take two people and be completed with precisely 17 folds.
The first specification was practical. The second was symbolic: Ohio was the 17th state to join the Union.
The American flag, while we’re on the subject, folds 13 times, representing the original 13 colonies, and into a triangle – a tip of the hat to the head wear that the Blue coats wore in the American Revolution.
But transforming a rectangle into a triangle is child’s play compared with the geometric gymnastics of getting a swallow-tail strip of fabric into a neat rectangle. Emphasis on neat.
Cleveland.com and Ohio.com
Here are the instructions:
