Match the Area
Match the Area is a geometry puzzle where every round is random. You always see one reference figure and its area — expressed in square centimeters (cm²) on screen — and you must draw a different type of shape so that your area matches (as closely as your eye and hand allow).
Areas in cm²
The game measures shapes in CSS pixel coordinates on the canvas, then displays areas in cm² using the usual web mapping: 96 CSS pixels ≈ 1 inch ≈ 2.54 cm. That keeps goal and player areas consistent with each other round after round. Treat the cm² values as within-game units — they won’t match a physical ruler on every monitor, but they’re stable for comparing reference vs your drawing.
What can appear as the reference
Each round picks one reference category, for example: circle, ellipse, square, rectangle, triangle, parallelogram, rhombus, trapezoid, regular pentagon, regular hexagon, or an irregular polygon.
What you might have to draw
Your task is always a different shape class than the reference — so you never redraw the same “kind” of figure on both sides in one round. You might be asked to draw an ellipse, square, rectangle, triangle, parallelogram, a regular polygon (5, 6 or 8 sides), or an irregular polygon with a stated vertex count.
Controls by shape
- Circle / square / regular polygon: press in the drawing zone, drag outward from the center; release to fix size. For a square, the bounding box stays axis-aligned; for regular polygons, you set the circumradius with that drag.
- Ellipse: same drag-from-center idea; horizontal and vertical distances from the center set the semi-axes.
- Rectangle: press one corner, drag to the opposite corner, release.
- Triangle: tap three vertices in order in the drawing zone; the triangle closes after the third tap.
- Parallelogram: tap three vertices that define half of the shape; the fourth vertex is inferred (you’ll see a dashed preview).
- Irregular polygon: tap each vertex in order until you reach the vertex count shown in the prompt.
After you press Check
- You get a short grade under the canvas plus Goal and Yours in cm².
- Area labels appear on both the reference shape and your figure (same cm² formatting).
- A similarity percentage appears inside a circle at the center of the board. It compares how close the two areas are (smaller vs larger area ratio, scaled to 0–100%). 100% means equal areas on that measure.
Use Retry to attempt the same round again; Next round draws a new reference and a new required shape.
Tips
- Start by guessing total scale from the reference — rough radius or side length — then adjust on Retry if your similarity is low.
- Ellipses need both axes right; rectangles give you two degrees of freedom (width × height) — often easier to tweak than a single-radius circle.
- For tap shapes, placement beats sketching — plan vertices so the enclosed region has plausible area before you commit.
Quick checklist
- I read whether the layout is reference left / draw right or top / bottom on a narrow screen.
- I know which draw mode this round uses (drag vs taps).
- After Check, I look at center similarity, HUD cm², and labels on the shapes together.