appear to pass completely through the garment.
Suddenly, the original four openings may no longer be the entire answer.
The difficulty comes from deciding whether each visible tear should count as:
– One hole
– Two holes
– A tear rather than a hole
– An opening connected to another opening
This is where the puzzle becomes interesting.
Why “Hole” Is More Complicated Than It Sounds
The word hole does not have one universally accepted mathematical definition in everyday language.
A hole can be:
– An opening through a material
– A cavity
– A gap
– A puncture
– A passage
– A tear
If you punch a pencil through a sheet of paper, you might say the paper has one hole.
But if the paper is folded, the situation becomes more complicated.
Suppose you fold a sheet in half and punch through both layers. Did you make:
one hole through the folded sheet?
Or:
two holes, one in
