One of my favorite puzzles is called “pentaminoes.” A pentamino is a shape made by joining five squares together along their edges. There are twelve distinct ways to do this, not counting reflections and rotations. A complete set has one of each.
Since there are twelve pieces in a set, each with an area of five, the area of the whole set is 60 squares. So it’s no surprise that the most common pentamino puzzle is a 6 x 10 rectangle.
Here’s one I designed for the GF. I’m more than pleased with how it came out.
You’d be surprised how hard it is to put all twelve pieces into the 6 x 10 frame. It’s all the more surprising when you know there are 2,349 distinct ways to do it.
Since we’re showing ours, here’s a set I borrowed off of the web (licensed for commercial sale, I promise!) and have made a dozen of to sell on the web and at an event this weekend. Crossing my fingers on that, but I’m happy with the result.
Yes but they will always fit, The fact the pentagon dominoes create dead spots I think would increase the challenge a great deal and be a focus of the fight
With “Heximoes” as a clue, google-fu seems to indicate five-sided tiles used to play a domino-type game are called “pentimoes.” But very little info is available.
I can certainly understand why the fact that pentagons won’t tile the plane could add interest to such a game. It would be interesting to build one and see how playing it goes.
