Pentominoes (part 1, the puzzle)
Pentominoes is a puzzle game in which you arrange oddly shaped pieces into
a rectangle. The puzzle pieces each consist of five units (pento is latin
for five). The science-y name for such geometric shapes is polyomino,
which sounds very mathematical, but it’s not to be confused with the term
polynomial, which is an entirely different thing. Anyway, pieces may be
rotated, mirrored, flipped to be made to fit inside the rectangular box.
Even though there are thousands of unique solutions, the puzzle is too
difficult for most people to solve. You can give it a try yourself (note:
keyboard and mouse required).
Usage
- drag and drop pieces into the box
- while dragging press R to rotate
- while dragging press M to mirror
- while dragging press F to flip
- pieces may be dragged out of the box
- press radiobuttons to select a different box size
This puzzle was written in TypeScript, just for fun. Writing a solver is still on my bucket list (spoiler: it’s a backtracking problem). A more challenging variant of the puzzle is stacking the pieces in a 3D box, which also has multiple solutions for varying box sizes.
Moreover, higher order polyominoes, such as hexominoes, also exist.