Pentomino Pairs Tiling a Rectangle with the Four Corner Cells Removed

  • Introduction
  • Nomenclature
  • Table
  • Solutions
  • Introduction

    A pentomino is a figure made of five squares joined edge to edge. There are 12 such figures, not distinguishing reflections and rotations. They were first enumerated and studied by Solomon Golomb.

    The problem of arranging copies of a polyomino to form a rectangle has been studied for a long time. Here I study the problem of arranging copies of two pentominoes to form a rectangle with the four corner cells removed.

    Carl Schwenke and Johann Schwenke improved on one of my solutions.

    See also

  • Pentomino Pairs Tiling a Rectangle with One Corner Cell Removed
  • Pentomino Pairs Tiling a Rectangle with Two Opposite Corner Cells Removed
  • Pentomino Pairs Tiling a Rectangle with Two Neighboring Corner Cells Removed
  • Pentomino Pairs Tiling a Rectangle with Three Corner Cells Removed
  • Scaled Pentomino Pairs Tiling a Rectangle with Four Corner Cells Removed
  • Nomenclature

    I use Solomon W. Golomb's original names for the pentominoes:

    Table of Results

    This table shows the smallest total number of copies of two pentominoes known to be able to tile a rectangle with three of its corner cells removed, using at least one copy of each pentomino.

    FILNPTUVWXYZ
    F * 12 10 4 4 41 4 28 4 × 12 ×
    I 12 * 8 9 8 12 52 9 20 4 4 12
    L 10 8 * 8 4 10 4 10 8 28 8 10
    N 4 9 8 * 4 9 10 16 10 9 4 12
    P 4 8 4 4 * 4 8 4 4 9 4 9
    T 41 12 10 9 4 * 10 × 10 × 20 ×
    U 4 52 4 10 8 10 * 52 8 4 8 72
    V 28 9 10 16 4 × 52 * 12 × 12 16
    W 4 20 8 10 4 10 8 12 * 9 8 57
    X × 4 28 9 9 × 4 × 9 * 4 ×
    Y 12 4 8 4 4 20 8 12 8 4 * 12
    Z × 12 10 12 9 × 72 16 57 × 12 *

    Solutions

    So far as I know, these solutions have minimal area. They are not necessarily uniquely minimal.

    4 Tiles

    8 Tiles

    9 Tiles

    10 Tiles

    12 Tiles

    16 Tiles

    20 Tiles

    28 Tiles

    41 Tiles

    52 Tiles

    57 Tiles

    58 Tiles

    72 Tiles

    Last revised 2024-02-27.


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    Col. George Sicherman [ HOME | MAIL ]