July 8, 2021 Incubator
Asmita Sodhi presented 5×5 Pentomino Sudoku puzzles. These are problems that her father, Amar worked on so they have a special place. You can read more about Amar and these puzzles on pages 10-12 of the 2018 CMS Notes: https://notes.math.ca/archives/Notesv50n6.pdf.
There are 107 ways to tile the 5×5 square with different pentominoes. What are the minimum number of clues required to give a unique answer for each? It ended up being a trick question. Some are impossible to solve although one of the two I claim to be impossible in the left video below is actually possible. Some great websites…
A list of the 107 tilings: https://isomerdesign.com/Pentomino/5×5/index.html
A Mathigon pad dedicated to pentomino tiling of 5×5 squares: https://mathigon.org/polypad/NPJv8D5HpEDA
Incubators happen on Thursdays every week 9:00 PT; 12:00 ET. They are a joyous collaboration of educators and mathematicians.