Polyform Puzzler

Contents

Overview

Polyforms are sets of all possible shapes constructed from multiple basic units (squares, triangles, etc.) following some simple rules. These shapes can then be combined into larger shapes, often in many different ways. These are polyform puzzles. (More info in the FAQ.)

Polyform Puzzler is a set of solvers for many polyform puzzles (like Pentominoes and Soma Cubes), and a software toolkit for exploring & solving polyform puzzles. It consists of a set of front-end applications for specific polyform puzzles and a Python library that does the heavy lifting. New polyforms and new puzzles can easily be defined and added. Python 2.5 or higher is required, but the latest 2.x.y is recommended.

A Sudoku puzzle solver is also included. The same back-end puzzle solving engine is used to solve Sudoku puzzles and polyform puzzles.

Here are some examples of polyform puzzles (all solved & drawn by Polyform Puzzler!):

docs/images/ominoes/pentominoes-6x10.png

Polyominoes, Pentominoes, & Hexominoes: 6×10 Pentominoes Rectangle (also, An Introduction to Polyominoes)

docs/images/hexes/pentahexes-10x11.png

Polyhexes & Pentahexes: 10×11 Pentahex Parallelogram (also, An Introduction to Polyhexes)

docs/images/cubes/pentacubes-5x9x9-fortress.png

Polycubes & Solid Pentominoes & Pentacubes: Pentacubes 5×9×9 Fortress (also, An Introduction to Polycubes)

docs/images/sticks/polysticks-1234-3x7-diamond-lattice.png

Polysticks: 3×7 Diamond Lattice (also, An Introduction to Polysticks)

docs/images/trigs/tritrigs-hex-3x1-ring.png

Polytrigs (triangular-grid polysticks): Tritrigs 3x1 Semi-Regular Hexagon Ring (also, An Introduction to Polytrigs)

All the details are in the FAQ and the Puzzles & Solutions doc.

Polyform Puzzler also solves Sudoku puzzles!

To get up & running quickly, see the Quick-Start section of the README file.

License

Polyform Puzzler is copyright ©1998-2015 by David J. Goodger and licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2.

Download

Feedback

Mailing list:puzzler-users@lists.sourceforge.net (subscribe)
Patches:via the SourceForge patch manager
Bug Reports:via the SourceForge bug tracker

Documentation

Solutions

The Puzzles & Solutions document lists all implemented puzzles and solution counts where known. We include a directory containing solutions to the puzzles Polyform Puzzler solves. These solutions are also available as a Gzip-compressed tarball.

Extras

In addition to the main Polyform Puzzler code, in the "misc" repository there is some maze-generating code.