13 Man 12 Man Cartoon Puzzle

Question

I got this puzzle from YouTube. I would watch the video first, but I'll include screen captures and a description below so we can discuss it.

13 Man Arrangement

In the beginning of the video he starts with a picture consisting of 13 cartoon men.

After counting them (accurately) he then rearranges them using these cuts:

12 Man Arrangement

Here is a good image of the cuts right before full placement:

Full placement:

If you got here without watching the video, the curious part is that
there are now only 12 men.

WHY DID WE LOSE ONE MAN??

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My Analysis

I realized I needed to narrow in. I chose shirts and pants to focus on. I originally tried just shirts or just pants, but because of where the split is, I wasn't getting anywhere. Choosing shirts and pants allows me to split the men in 2 like the cuts do.

The way I see it, logically, if the number of pants and shirts don't change, then neither should the number of men.

But if you count them in the separate images, you see that they do!

I thought if I wrote it down and played with it I might see what I am missing. I went from left to right, bottom to top (pants then shirts) representing the colors with "b" and "w" ("black" and "white" respectively).

NOTE: Because of the placement of the men, it made more sense to go bottom to top if you try splitting them. If you tilt your head to the right you can see it matches the image.

• 13 Man

  • bw/ww/bw
  • wb/bw/wb
  • bw/bw
  • ww/bw/wb
  • bw/bw

• 12 Man

  • bw/ww/wb
  • wb/bw
  • bw/bw
  • ww/bw/wb
  • bw/bw

This is where I'm stuck!!

Side Note:

This reminds me of another puzzle (I can't seem to find it now) where an image of a comb has a number of teeth (well say 13), and the way the image of the cut (much like this one) if you rearrange it you end up with 12 (or something) by increasing the length of the teeth.

I think a similar principle applies here, but I just can't see how.

Answer 1

Here is a pictorial way to see what is going on. In its simplest version, it works like the following picture:

There are 12 tall rectangles, each 13 segments high. By shifting the top half of the picture one step to the right you form 13 rectangles, each 12 segments high.

Having these rectangles in order like this makes it rather obvious, so they instead rearrange them to be spaced five apart, so that you have to (cyclically) shift the top half five steps to the left instead of just one step to the right.

Here are the heights of the parts in the 12-man arrangement:

    1  6  11 3  8 |0  5  10 2  7  12 4  9
    12 7  2  10 5  0  8  3  11 6  1  9  4

Note that each man has total length 13 because every column adds to 13 (except for the empty spot near the middle). By swapping the two pieces, the top halves of the men are shifted so that each is replaced by the next smaller one, and the largest part becomes a whole man on its own. So it becomes this arrangement, where there are 13 men each of height 12:

    0  5  10 2  7  12 4  9| 1  6  11 3  8 
    12 7  2  10 5  0  8  3  11 6  1  9  4

It is not possible to point to any particular man that has (dis)appeared, because each man consists of two parts which end up in two different men when the pieces are rearranged. The 12 men are disassembled into two parts and those parts rearranged to form 13 different men.

Answer 2

The easiest way to notice what's going on is to look at the heads and feet of the people. In the first arrangement, the person on the far left has a perfectly flat head. In the second arrangement, his head is round because a small slice of somebody else's head has been moved on top of it. Likewise, the sixth person from the left has a perfectly flat pair of shoes before moving the pieces, and that same person has a thicker, rounder pair of shoes after the move. Each person is becoming slightly taller, by swapping its top half with a larger top half from a different person.

Of the 13 initial people, 11 of them are made of two "half-people", but the remaining two (the ones mentioned above) are only a single "half-person" each, for a total of 24 "half-people". After rearranging the 24 "half-people" such that each half is paired with another half, only 12 people can be seen.

Answer 3

While I believe @codewarrior()'s answer is correct, it just wasn't intuitive to me.

I felt I needed a breakdown of exactly what was happening.

UPDATE: @JaapScherphuis' answer has a great picture that helps too!

Similar to the comb trick I mentioned,

But I needed an explanation as to where spare body parts are coming from, and it turns out there are a few tricks used

that are a little more crafty than simply borrowing a peice.

The following is my effort to break it down into steps

I first found it more intuitive to do it

in reverse order of the video because I now beleive the original image has 12 men.

So I numbered the men in the picture:

And from this image I will refer to them by their numbers in the list below.

Step 1. Empty space lands on 1's head
(freeing up the crown of a head)

Step 2. 1's crown lands on 8's eyes
(freeing up a crown and forhead)

Step 3. 8's eyes land 4's upper nose
(freeing up a crown to a nose)

They do a neat trick here:

Step 4. 4 uses his upper nose landing on 11's shoulders to convert the neck of 11's shirt into 4's new jaw
(11's whole head has been freed up)

Step 5. 11's head lands halfway down 6's chest
(freeing up a head and shoulders)

Step 6. 6's head and shoulders land right above 2's belly
(freeing up a head and chest)

Step 7. 2's head and chest land halfway down 9's belly
(freeing up a head and what will work for a torso)

Step 8. 9's head and torso land halfway down 5's thighs
(freeing up what will work for a body above the knees)

Step 9. 5's head to thighs land on 12's knees
(freeing up a head to what will work for a body down to the ankles)

Step 10. 12's head to ankles land on 7's feet
(freeing up a head to ankles with longer legs)

Step 11. 7's head to ankles land on the soles of 3's feet serving as thin shoes
(freeing up a whole man with thin shoes)

Step 12. 3 with his thin shoes lands on 10's shoes making them thicker shoes
(freeing up 10 as a whole man with thin shoes of his own)

Step 13. 10 lands on empty space
(a new man)

NOTE: the part I couldn't wrap my head around before was that

A number of these steps used visual illusions and repurposed parts to serve the new smaller bodies. That's the part that was bothering me because it wasn't as simple as just shortening a line; they used tricks to free up body parts.

I don't usually add an answer on top of another's regarding a question that I asked, and I must give credit to @codewarrior()'s answer for confirming my suspicions

as I alluded to about the comb puzzle mentioned in my question.

But I thought I would share what I eventually came to (that finally satisfied my confusion that has kept me up so late.)

P.S. I welcome more answers to perhaps even better explain this facinating puzzle.