How did Polyform Puzzler begin?
I first discovered Pentominoes in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Imperial Earth, probably around the time I was 11 or 12 years old. I picked up a pentominoes puzzle (“Hexed”, by Gabriel Toys) at a local hobby store and spent many hours discovering solutions. In university, probably while avoiding legitimate study, I wrote the first implementation of a Pentominoes-solving project, in Object Pascal. I developed an algorithm that solved the puzzle using brute force with some intelligence applied: • Place each pentomino in every possible location. • Confirm that the remaining empty spaces all have areas that are a multiple of 5 squares. • For areas of exactly 5 squares, determine the piece that fits and confirm its availability. • Check for bottlenecks that force a subset of the remaining space to accept only a single specific piece, and confirm its availability. When I first learned Python, I reimplemented this as a practical learning exercise. I improved the algorithm a bit and got it to work
