Cut a crescent-moon banner into pieces that reassemble into a perfect cross
A captured banner is shaped like a crescent moon, identical on both sides so pieces may be flipped over. Using only straight cuts, can you divide the crescent into a small number of pieces that can be rearranged, with nothing wasted, into a perfect Greek cross?
Reveal the answer
Yes. Dudeney's solution cuts the crescent into pieces that first reassemble into a square, then re-cuts that square into a symmetrical Greek cross — a dissection in two short stages rather than one long one. From Henry Dudeney's The Canterbury Puzzles (1907).
— Henry Dudeney, The Canterbury Puzzles — 1907, 'The Crescent and the Cross'