Riddle help

shape

Shadow.

I once heard a tesseract model described as the shadow of a four-dimensional shape.

Yep...just as a line is the shadow of the square, a square is a shadow of a cube.

But also...if you draw two lines parallel to each other and connect the ends you get a square. If you draw two squares parallel to each other and connect the corners you get a cube and (yes, you've guessed it) if you draw two cubes parallel to each other and connect the (same) corners you get a tesseract!

Don't you mean 3-D-shape?


Whim

No. A tesseract (also known as a hyper-cube) is actually a four-dimensional shape. We are able to postulate the existence of such shapes, but can only physically render them in three dimensions.

I suppose mathemeticians can actually visualize this stuff. I'm forced to rely on their descriptions.

A tesseract is a 3D shadow of a 4D shape that can be represented in 2D

I like the answer shadow, except I see no reason it shouldn't exist in 1 dimension (a line). the answer shape is definitely not correct. I would go with shadow and say the author is a bit confused on dimensions

a tesseract is a 4 dimensional analog to the cube which can only be represented physically by creating a 3d shadow. like our normal shadows, the shape of the tesseract can be represented in many different ways in three dimensions, depending on the angle of the tesseract to the light source. Its true beauty is only apparent in the imagination

If a shadow uses one less dimension than the original shape and the original shape is one dimensional, then the shadow would be zero dimensional. A point?

a point, exactly. or... my point exactly. its still a shadow. possible that the author of the riddle forgot that there was a 0 dimension, thought 1 was a point or something. it happens. I happen to like shadow as an answer.

oh, and I just noticed the curious lack of "it is two dimensional in a three dimensional world". makes me wonder if its supposed to be something that exists in three dimensions, since three is obviously the easiest dimension for us to think about.

I think the reason they said that it couldn't exist in a 1 dimentional space is because a point in one dimentional space is infinately small. Is that right?

no smaller than a line in 2 dimensional space. they are all infinately small. ever try to weigh a shadow?

good point.

Thankyou!
I've spent the last 48 hours scouring the internet for the answer to that riddle!

Thankyou the answer was shadow.


This question was a riddle in a game called Excelsior. I had know idea they would make it so hard.

Thanks again,
Colin

On-line of off-the-shelf?

It's an old top down RPG. The puzzle was just a small part of the game, but there are a few of them in it.

It's a shareware game, all the details can be found at:

http://www.nwlink.com/~dberke/default.htm