Here you are presented with a plan according to which you can make an interesting Pentomino board game (Pentomino puzzle).
Polyomino is a plane geometric figure obtained by joining several unit squares edge-to-edge (with one joint side only). The squares are all equal-sized. Pentomino puzzle is a kind of tiling puzzle (Dissection puzzles) with the task to tile (without overlap and without gaps) rectangular areas of different sizes using 12 pentominoes. Since each pentomino consists of 5 unit squares, all the 12 pentominoes consist of 60 squares. If you want to tile all of the 12 pentominoes, the rectangular area should also have 60 squares. Possible dimensions of such a rectangular area (grid) are: 6x10 squares, 5x12 squares, 4x15 squares i 3x20 squares. Total number of solutions in each case: 6x10 – 2339 solutions, 5x12 – 1010 solutions, 4x15 – 368 solutions, 3x20 – 2 solutions. The pentomino puzzle whose plan you are offered here is one of the 5x12 kind.
330mm (13'') x 157mm (6 3/16'') x 28mm (1 3/32'')
To make the Pentomino board game more interesting, there is a movable partition piece on the playing board; by alternating its position, non-standard rectangular tiling areas can be formed and subsequently blank squares may appear. You should make a few polyominoes which consist of one or two unit squares to fill the blank spaces. By moving the partition, 5 squares (i.e. one pentomino) are added or subtracted. If you want to play by more complex rules, use only pentominoes in non-standard rectangular surfaces; if, on the other hand, you want to work with children or just simplify the rules, use polyominoes as well.
Pentomino is polyomino consisting of 5 connected unit squares. If we exclude the possibility of rotations and reflections, 12 configurations can be made which are depicted in the following picture:
Latin alphabet labeling scheme for the 12 possible pentomino shapes - The first naming convention
You can play with this Pentomino board game in the following ways:
- Find as many solutions as possible with 12 pentominoes;
- Use the partition and tile only with pentominoes or use polyominoes;
- Tile various 2D shapes with pentominoes (some of which can be seen in the picture below);
- Invent 2D shapes for tiling;
- Tile or invent various 3D shapes (3D forms, which you can make using pentominoes);
- Get as many pentominoes as possible tiled up until they flip over.
Tetris, one of the most popular video game in the world is based on Pentomino board game. The most important difference is that with the former, polyominoes with 5 squares are used, and with the latter – only 4.