this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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It's only more efficient when the containing square is large enough that there would be wasted space on the edges if the inner squares were lined up as a grid. The outer square of the waffle iron is almost but not quite large enough to fit a 4x5 grid. People losing their minds over this weird configuration being "more efficient" think it's because it's more efficient than a grid where all the space is used, which is not what this would be.
the joke is about achieving max density of the squares, density as in square per area of the waffle
of course you can make the whole waffle bigger, but it would decrease the density
a better solution is adding smaller squares though
Yeah, if you have extra space but not enough for another row or column, just adjust the size of the inner squares.
Yeah, there's a lot of unused space there. Or just look at the gap in the middle of that row of 4. A slightly smaller square could have fit a 5x5, even.
It's a novelty, not an optimization.