This sounds like a Pascal's triangle question or binomial expansion where you add up all the coefficients.
almost 8 layers, 97 bricks needed for 7 layers, 177 for 8, 6 bricks short of 8 layers
or alternatively, lop off the top 3 layers, and you've got 170 bricks for the
lower 5 layers. One brick more than needed for those 5 layers.
Depending on how you interpret the question, it's somewhere between 5+ and 8 layers. Minimum 5, maximum nearly 8.
first line of Pascal's triangle is 1
2nd line is 11 2+1=3 3
3rd is 121 4+3= 7
4th is 1331 8+7= 15
5th 14641 16+15 =31
6th 151051 22+31= 53
7th 16-15-15-61 44+53= 97
8th 17-21-30-21-71 =88+97=177
this is the same as finding all the coefficients of the binomial expansion of (x+y)n with n varying between 1 and 8, and finding the coefficients of each term.
That may be as triangular as you can get from rectangular bricks.
