PentoPuzzle V 1.0

- What are pentomino's ?

- What is pentopuzzle ?

- How to play the game

- Menuoptions

- About the author and the program


What are pentominoes

Pentominoes are the shapes you can construct if you put 5 squares together in every possible combination.

You can construct 12 shapes this way, they are displayed below.

I encountered pentominoes for the first time in a book by the SF-author Arthur C. Clarke.

If you want to know more about these curious shapes:

Solomon W. Golomb and Martin Gardner have both written books and articles about pentominoes.


What is PentoPuzzle

The surface of the 12 pentominoes together is 60 squares,

this is also the surface of a rectangle with a size of 6 by 10, 5 by 12, 4 by 15 or 3 by 20 squares.

The object of PentoPuzzle is to put all the pentominoes in a rectangle.

If you start playing with this program you might think there aren't many solutions,

but :

for the 	6 by 10 rectangle there are 	2339 solutions.

5 by 12	1010 solutions.

4 by 15	368 solutions.

3 by 20	2 solutions.

So don't dispair if you haven't found a single solution after half an hour of playing.


How to play the game
How to play

Moving a pentomino:

You can move a pentomino by pressing the left mousebutton down when the cursor is over the pentomino that you want to move.

Then move the mouse while still holding the left mousebutton down.

To stop moving the pentomino, just let go of the mousebutton.

Flipping a pentomino:

Doubleclick the left mousebutton to flip the pentomino you cursor is on.

This changes the pentomino into its mirrorimage.

Rotating a pentomino:

To rotate one of the pentominoes, you just move the cursor to the pentomino and click the right mousebutton.

If you have finally found a solution, the program will automatically save it to a file, so you have a record of all the solutions you have found to the different puzzles.


Menuoptions

- Filemenu:

+ Load:

* Load saved puzzle: Load a puzzle that has been saved with the save-option.

* Load solution: Load one of the solutions the program saves automatically if you find one.

+ Save: Save a puzzle you are working on to a file, so you can continue solving it later.

+ Solve: When there is at least one pentomino in the rectangle, you can ask the program to try solving the puzzle. If there is a solution, the program will find it. But it could take a few minutes.

+ New: Replace all pentominoes to their startposition

+ Exit: Exit the program

- Typemenu: This is the menu to choose which puzzle you want to try to solve.

+ 6 x 10

+ 5 x 12

+ 4 x 15

+ 3 x 20

- Helpmenu:

+ Help : information about using the program.

+ About : info about program and author


About the author
About the author and the program

PentoPuzzle was written by Kurt Van den Branden.

This program is distributed as shareware, you can give it to anybody you want, but you have to leave the program unchanged.

If you want to support my programming, please send me a simple postcard,

this way I will know there are people that are interested in the things I write,

and I might write more windows-programs for you to enjoy.

If somebody is interested, I have all the solutions to the puzzles.

you can send your postcards and all suggestions and bugs to this address:

Kurt Van den Branden

Schoofland 49

9120 Beveren

Belgium

internet e-mail addres : kvd2@bipsy.se.bel.alcatel.be