New to me words: Monomino (Domino) Tromino Tetromino Pentomino Polyomino Methuselah

Happy Christmas 😊 🎄 

 Exciting new word discovery for me. Good Numberphile/maths video out on youtube with some important vocabulary for Blockus players 😜. 

 The baby piece has another name: *Monomino* :). Yes, now it all makes sense, Monomino is immortalised in THAT Muppet show Monomino song ;). The two-piece is *Domino*, a bit scary (late 17th century: from French, denoting a hood worn by priests in winter, probably based on Latin dominus ‘lord, master’. The [tile/game] name "domino" is probably derived from the resemblance to a kind of carnival costume worn during the Venetian Carnival, often consisting of a black-hooded robe and a white mask.). 

 Then we have the two *Trominoes*. 

 Next we have the five *Tetronimoes* including baby snake all very familiar to Tetris players. 

 Next we have then the twelve (free) *Pentominoes* whose shapes some Blockus players know surprisingly well :-). This Numberphile video goes into the pentominoes and polyominoes a bit: https://youtu.be/ONdgXYEBihA?si=sZm7upEYcquWngH-

The pentominoes and earlier and some later orders are known since "antiquity". Further orders you have to decide if holes are allowed inside (making complete tiling/tesselations impossible). Nowadays a few hundred orders of polyominoes have been worked out but no absolute mathematical method for finding them is known. see also https://www.etymonline.com/word/domino https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominoes dice game, China origin, all combos of results of 2 * 6 sided die rolls dominos have unicode representations

 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentomino Pentomino 2 naming schemes FILiPiNo STUVWXY or NOPQRSTUVWXY .. I think

  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetromino and Tetris

  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/361943.The_Riddles_of_Epsilon 

 Alex Bellos on Pentomino puzzle https://youtu.be/wZ1E_CM7MqA?si=q8wYFDFTlP4INnQK

Book. The Canterbury Puzzles and the broken chessboard puzzle - tile 8x8=64 square with the 12 free pentominoes and one square tetromino 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19191808-the-canterbury-puzzles-and-other-curious-problems https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27635 see page 66. The broken chessboard.

  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_(mathematics) The F or R Pentonimo is a Methuselah i.e. a long lived Conway Life pattern https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

other pentominos die out or stabilize quickly 

 FILiPiNo STUVWXY 

F stable after 1103 generations, population 116, 86 in middle, a few 6? gliders heading off to infinity 

I stable Gen=6 Pop=12 pulsar (4 3bar rotators) 

L stable Gen=9 Pop=12 pulsar 

P Gen=4 Pop=0 dead 

N Gen=5 Pop=0 dead 

S Gen=3 Pop=0 dead 

T stable Gen=10 Pop=12 pulsar 

U Gen=4 Pop=0 dead 

V stable Gen=3 Pop=7 still life loaf = 2 dominos joined at corner forming sides of 90L triangle with 3 single monomino joining onside corners along hypotemuse 

W stable Gen=2 Pop=7 still life loaf 

X stable Gen=6 Pop=12 pulsar 

Y Gen=3 Pop=0 dead 

SEQUENCES ..

 Vpent-Wpent-x-loaf x=3sided square with missing centre and one corner pop=7 

 Tpent-Ttetra-Pop7.3Square.missing2adjacentcorners-Pop6.3bar.3monoinvabove-Pop6.novastar.emptycentresurroundedbydommondommon-Pop8.3Square.missingcentre-Pop8.3SquareOnDiagonal.missingcentreXPent-Pop12.3SquareOnDiagonal.missingcentreMon-Pop12.5Square.missing4cornersandallcentre-Pop20.4xXPents-pulsar 

the stable middle of Fpentominon after 1106 iterations

 Golly web site: http://golly.sourceforge.net/ Golly is an open source, cross-platform application for exploring Conway's Game of Life and many other types of cellular automata.

The loaf in Golly