IMAGINE a bathroom floor covered in black and white tiles. Each tile is the same shape and they fit together perfectly without gaps or overlaps. Now imagine the tile is shaped like a hat, and no matter how big your bathroom is, each tile fits together in so many ways it creates a pattern that would never, ever repeat.
These shapes are called Einstein tiles. It’s not named after the scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955), but instead comes from German, where “ein Stein” means one stone. Simply put, it means it’s a shape that doesn’t cause repeating patterns.
Most tile patterns replicate after a while and mathematicians have been searching for a new Einstein tile for about 50 years.
Now David Smith, a puzzle and riddle enthusiast from England, has discovered an Einstein tile with the help of a computer program. The shape is called the
