Scaled 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.

    Here I study the problem of arranging copies of two pentominoes at various scales to form a rectangle with the four corner cells removed.

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

    See also

  • Pentomino Pairs Tiling a Rectangle with Four Corner Cells Removed
  • Scaled Pentomino Triples 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 scaled pentominoes known to be able to tile a rectangle with four of its corner cells removed, using at least one copy of each pentomino.

    FILNPTUVWXYZ
    F * 12 10 4 4 34 4 10 4 × 10 ×
    I 12 * 6 9 5 12 13 9 19 4 4 12
    L 10 6 * 6 4 10 4 10 8 13 6 10
    N 4 9 6 * 4 9 10 16 10 9 4 10
    P 4 5 4 4 * 4 7 4 4 9 4 7
    T 34 12 10 9 4 * 10 72 10 × 20 ×
    U 4 13 4 10 7 10 * 40 8 4 8 46
    V 10 9 10 16 4 72 40 * 12 × 10 13
    W 4 19 8 10 4 10 8 12 * 9 8 52
    X × 4 13 9 9 × 4 × 9 * 4 ×
    Y 10 4 6 4 4 20 8 10 8 4 * 12
    Z × 12 10 10 7 × 46 13 52 × 12 *

    Solutions

    So far as I know, these solutions use as few tiles as possible. They are not necessarily uniquely minimal.

    4 Tiles

    5 Tiles

    6 Tiles

    7 Tiles

    8 Tiles

    9 Tiles

    10 Tiles

    12 Tiles

    13 Tiles

    16 Tiles

    19 Tiles

    20 Tiles

    22 Tiles

    34 Tiles

    40 Tiles

    46 Tiles

    52 Tiles

    72 Tiles

    Last revised 2024-02-27.


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    Col. George Sicherman [ HOME | MAIL ]