This is one of those popular pictures on sites like Facebook. I always see a huge variation of answers such as $8, 9, 16, 17, 24, 28, 30, 40, 41, 52,$ etc., yet I've never seen a definitive answer on any website.
I counted $16$ whole squares ($4$ going down on left side, $4$ going down on right side, $8$ small squares in the centre). With this method the answer could also be $17$ if you want to count the entire shape as one big square.
I can also see the answer being $24$ if you count the smaller squares separately, as if they were floating above the main grid instead of intersecting with it.
Is there a right answer, or is it possible that there is no 'right' answer and it just depends on your counting method?
Best Answer
Thanks to Ross Millikan for helping me to find the last squares. Here is an GIF animation (344 kb) showing 40 squares from biggest to smallest: