Polyominoes.co.uk

Introduction

For the past few years I maintained the blog at polyominoes.blogspot.com, but because the blog format really doesn't lend itself to this kind of topic (and partially because eww gross google) I started this site up alongside it which will eventually have pretty much the same information, just better interlinked and cross-referenced for ease of browsing.

Quick Links:
Polyominoes	Polyiamonds	Polyhexes	Polyaboloes
Polycubes	3½-ominoes	Misc. Polyforms	Non-polyform Stuff

Recently added/updated:

• Polyominoes 101 - the introduction page I should have written years ago (07/02/24)
• First Steps - some early solves with heptominoes (15/12/23)
• More Heptominoes lazily copied n' pasted from the blog but with nicer formatting. (15/12/23)
• Not Polyomino-related at all: Mental Factorisation (23/11/23)
• Planar Heptacubes (The Lazy Way) (04/02/23)
• Enneominoes (26/11/22)
• Subsets of the Hexominoes (13/08/22)
• Pentahexes (18/06/22)
• Octomino Prisms using the Tetracubes (24/01/22, but lifted directly from an old blog post so not really new)
• Hexahexes (03/12/21)

Links to other, better Polyform Sites

While there are lots of sites about polyominoes and other polyforms on the World Wide Net, they're all sort of spread out all over the place. I'll add more sites to this list as and when I find them.

Solving Software:

• Peter Esser's site has solvers for polyominoes, polyiamonds, polyhexes and polycubes, and each has options for creating sets of pieces with half-squares, half-hexagons etc. so can be used for polyaboloes, polydrafters and other weird piece sets.
• FlatPoly2 by Aad van de Wetering. This one allows you to specify custom piece sets, and is nice for enumerating all solutions for a shape. He also has solvers for other shapes too on there.
• Polyform Puzzler - the site also has lots of example solutions.
  
• PolySolver by Jaap Scherphuis - Java solver that can handle lots of exotic grid types: polycairoes, diamonds, kites, you can even do polydrafters and polydudes if you've got the patience to input the pieces.
  

General polyform-related sites:

• The Poly Pages by Andrew Clarke.
  
• Livio Zucca's site
  
• Todor Tchervenkov's site is pretty much the go-to place for everything to do with hexiamonds and heptiamonds.
  
• Kadon Enterprises - They have various physical sets of polyforms for sale, as well as several pages with solutions for heptominoes, octominoes, polyiamonds, hexahexes, etc.
• Miroslav Vicher's Puzzle Pages has a lot of interesting polyomino variants, and goes into depth about the pieces used in the Eternity puzzle.
• Mathpuzzle covers all sorts of recreational mathematics topics, but if you dig around there are some nice polyform-specific articles like these two on polyiamonds.
• le-chevalier.blogspot.com Fully solved hexiamond/heptiamond shapes, i.e. where the total amount of solutions for the shape has been enumerated. And my introduction to the nice little graphs that illustrate the relationships between solutions.
• Puzzle Zapper blog - All sorts of puzzles and recreational mathsy things on here, often with a polyform flavour to them.
  
• Puzzle Laboratory Guide to Hexominoes - by Michael Keller, who also found the 51x58 octomino solution here.
• Various hexomino, heptomino and octomino solutions by Helmut Postl.
• Abaroth's World: Puzzles - has a lot on sets of pieces using unusual base shapes.

Archive.org versions of long-gone sites:

• Brendan Owen's site with info about the Eternity puzzle and related sets of pieces (polydudes).

Lewis Patterson. Last updated 04/02/2023.