A square and two isosceles triangles. What’s the angle?
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Solution
The angle α is 45°.

This solution propagates the angle beta throughout the diagram using:
- Two angles in an isosceles triangle area equal.
- A line cutting two parallel lines forms equal angles.
- The sum of angles on one side of a straight line is 180.
Now we can use the interior angle sum in the small triangle on the top: α+90-β+180-β=180. This gives α=2β-90. We already knew that α=180-2β. Combining the two gives α=45.