>>>>>From Facebook.
>>>>>I get 10 as answer.
>>>>>Others get 14, but don't explain why.
>>>>>Does anyone get 14?
>>>>you are right
>>>>i guess its the number of squares: 3*3=9 plus teh whole one = 10
>>>
>>>That's what I thought, but I think that Jos' explanation of 14 makes sense
>>
>>If you count individual line segments, the top one has 12, the bottom one 24.
>>
>>So, if the top = 5, the bottom = 10 :)
>
>There are so many valid answers here.
>It's almost like a program.

That's the point, this is the sort of question favoured by HR/recruiting types in interviews. There is no single "correct" answer. They're actually more interested in unusual answers, it indicates thinking outside the (square) box.

Another answer would be 5 x ( 32 / 9 ), the idea being that a square is just a special type of rectangle. With that thought in mind the top one has 9 rectangles, the bottom 32 (if I've counted correctly: 6@ 1x3, 12@ 1x2 plus the 14 squares).

I was also playing around with the idea of using a number system other than base 10. It would need to be minimum base 6 (since the first number is 5). I suppose any "valid" result could be expressed in a base other than 10 to yield a different looking answer.

Yet another way to look at it is as a plan view of a 3D structure. In that case the top one could be 4 cubes pushed together on a flat surface, plus one more cube on top of one of those 4. The second one would be a minimum of 8 (the center could be a hole, it looks the same in a plan view), with no upper limit. In that case the "answer" would be "more than 7".