{"id":26,"date":"2010-02-27T03:03:40","date_gmt":"2010-02-27T08:03:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/puzzlezapper.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/pentomino-layer-cake\/"},"modified":"2010-12-17T20:17:15","modified_gmt":"2010-12-18T01:17:15","slug":"pentomino-layer-cake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/puzzlezapper.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/pentomino-layer-cake\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentomino Layer Cake"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the Polyforms list<\/a>, Erich Friedman posed a very interesting new pentomino tiling problem:<\/p>\n

Tile a rectangle of minimal area with pentominoes so that for each pentomino there is exactly one stratum, or cluster of one or more copies of that pentomino that reaches from one side of the rectangle to the opposite side. Pentominoes in a stratum must form a single group, connected by edges, not just corners.<\/p>\n

Michael Reid found this 3\u00d730 solution: <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s not hard to prove that it is minimal. A natural extension of the problem is to find minimal solutions for 4\u00d7n and 5\u00d7n rectangles. Michael Reid found the first 5\u00d7n solution, but I improved on it with this 5\u00d732 solution:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The 4\u00d7n problem seems to be the hardest, and initially it was not clear that it would be possible. The X pentomino has only one possible stratum, which only can only be bordered by Y, I or N, and it is also difficult to find matches for a Z stratum. Additionally, only Y, L, and P can form straight line stratum boundaries usable for the top and bottom of the rectangle. (See wikipedia’s pentomino page<\/a> if you don’t know the correspondence between letters and shapes.) I did eventually find this 4\u00d750 solution:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This solution seems rather prolifigate with its pentominoes, but finding any solution at all was a bit of a surprise.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/b> Erich Friedman’s Math Magic for April 2010 further explored<\/a> this subject.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the Polyforms list, Erich Friedman posed a very interesting new pentomino tiling problem: Tile a rectangle of minimal area with pentominoes so that for each pentomino there is exactly one stratum, or cluster of one or more copies of that pentomino that reaches from one side of the rectangle to the opposite side. Pentominoes … Continue reading Pentomino Layer Cake<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[10,11,19],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recreational-mathematics","tag-pentominoes","tag-polyominoes","tag-tiling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/puzzlezapper.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/puzzlezapper.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/puzzlezapper.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puzzlezapper.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puzzlezapper.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/puzzlezapper.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74,"href":"https:\/\/puzzlezapper.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/puzzlezapper.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puzzlezapper.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/puzzlezapper.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}