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#240 Tango tiles

Set by Colin Wright

The new Astoria Hotel has a square ballroom with a chandelier hanging directly over the centre of it. There is one job remaining – to tile the floor.

The owner, Lord Fusspot, has three demands. First, the tiles must all be congruent (which means they are all of the same shape, but can be rotated and/or flipped). Second, for some superstitious reason, the edge or corner of a tile can’t be directly underneath the chandelier. Third, there must be an even number of tiles.

Not too unreasonable, is it? And yet this turns out to be a fiendishly difficult puzzle. For example, the tiling on the left would be fine except that it has an odd number of tiles, while the one on the right has an edge under the chandelier (which is marked as X).

If you can find a way to do it, give yourself a medal. If you can do it with fewer than 10 tiles, make that a gold medal.

Solution next week

#239 Snap judgement

Solution

It will always require 14 snaps. You start with one piece, and each snap creates one additional piece. The double-width chunk doesn’t affect the answer.