Image by Cmglee, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A square can tile a plane but can form a repeating pattern. Is there a single shape that can tile but never repeats? That’s what’s called the “einstein problem”.

Link to the article

In 2010, the first never-repeating tile was discovered: the Socolar-Taylor tile. But it’s a bit weird, having several separated, disconnected bits.

In 2022, “The Hat” (shown in pic) was discovered, and it’s a lot less weird. It only has 13 sides and nice angles that are multiples of 30°.

    • bitfucker@programming.dev
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      1 month ago

      You know what? If you want to be a prick you could hire a contractor to tesselate it lol. “Hey, I already have the tile, can you assemble it for me?”

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      1 month ago

      I’d imagine that one could have software generate a tesselation.

      • bitfucker@programming.dev
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        1 month ago

        I think due to the fact that we know for sure the patterns are non repeating, the algorithm would never terminate for an infinitely large plane. But for a bounded plane, then yeah, that’s doable