There are currently two types of tiles supported, which are explained below.

An LTile of size n is the L-tetronimo with n + 1 blocks. For example anLTile of size 3 is:

while an LTile of size 5 is:

A TTile of size n is the T-tetronimo with 2(n+1) blocks. For example, a TTile of size 1 is:

while a TTile of size 2 is:

There are currently three supported boards: Rectangle, LBoard, and TBoard.

There are two parameters that affect the shape/size of an L/T board: board_size and board_scale. With these parameters, a tile (either L or T) of size board_size is created, and then each box in this tile is replaced by board_scale ** 2 boxes.

For example, an LBoard with size 4 and scale 1 looks like:

while bumping the scale up to 2 results in:

A TBoard with size 1 and scale 1 looks like:

while bumping the scale up to 2 results in:

There are two parameters that affect the shape/size of a rectangular board: board_size (height) and width.

For example, a Rectangle with board_size = 3 and width = 5 looks like:

While a Rectangle with board_size = 6 and width = 4 looks like:

Note: The scale parameter is ignored for Rectangle.

The following command counts the number of tilings of an LBoard of size 2 by LTile's of size 2, with scale parameter x:

dcc_tiler_cli --count --scale x --board-type LBoard --tile-type LTile 2 2

This results in the following tiling counts as x varies:

This sequence of integers (1, 1, 4, 409, ...) does not appear in the OEIS.

The command here is:

dcc_tiler_cli --count --scale x --board-type TBoard --tile-type TTile 1 1

Exercise: Show that if x > 1 and x % 4 != 0 then there are no such tilings!

This results in the following tiling counts as x varies:

Instead of modifying the scale parameter each time, you can instead use the --scaling option as follows:

dcc_tiler_cli --scaling --board-type TBoard --tile-type TTile 1 1

which results in the following output:

scale(1), 1 tilings
scale(2), 0 tilings
scale(3), 0 tilings
scale(4), 54 tilings
scale(5), 0 tilings
scale(6), 0 tilings
scale(7), 0 tilings
scale(8), 655302180 tilings
...

Many combinations are possible. An example is:

dcc_tiler_cli --count --scale 4 --board-type LBoard --tile-type TTile 3 1

which counts 54 tilings. An example of such a tiling is:

Suppose we wanted to count how many ways there are to tile an n x n rectangle using T-tetronimos of size 1. The command here is:

dcc_tiler_cli --count --board-type Rectangle --width n --tile-type TTile n 1

which results in the following output:

which agrees with the table appearing in C. Merino, 2008.

After counting the number of tilings, it is often useful to render an image of such a tiling for visual inspection. We know from the previous section that there are 54 tilings of an LBoard of size 3, scale 4 by TTile's of size 1. To generate such a tiling, we use the --single option and pipe the output into output.svg:

dcc_tiler_cli --single --scale 4 --board-type LBoard --tile-type TTile 3 1 > output.svg

Note: The CLI generates at most 1000 tilings and then selects a single tiling to render from among them, so there is no guarantee that running this command repeatedly will generate all possible tilings.

Instead of generating a single image, you can also generate a ZIP file containing all tilings using the --all <filename> command. For example:

dcc_tiler_cli --all tilings.zip --scale 4 --board-type LBoard --tile-type TTile 3 1

It is possible to output all tiling data as a graph represented in JSON. A 4x8 rectangular board is represented by the JSON object:

{ "board" : [ [false, false, false, false], 
              [false, false, false, false], 
              [false, false, false, false],
              [false, false, false, false],
              [false, false, false, false],
              [false, false, false, false],
              [false, false, false, false],
              [false, false, false, false], ] }

If we placed down a size 1 T-tetronimo in the top left corner of the board, our new board would be:

{ "board" : [ [true,  true,  true,  false], 
              [false, true,  false, false], 
              [false, false, false, false],
              [false, false, false, false],
              [false, false, false, false],
              [false, false, false, false],
              [false, false, false, false],
              [false, false, false, false], ] }

The tiling graph consists of the following:

• An array nodes_arena consisting of board objects (as above),
• An object edges of the form:

{
   "0":  [ 1, 2 ],
   "1" : [ 3 ],
   "2" : [ 4 ],
   "3" : [ 5, 7, 8, 6 ],
}

• An object rev_edges of the form:

{
    "1":  [ 0 ],
    "2" : [ 0 ],
    "3" : [ 1 ],
    "4" : [ 2 ],
    "5" : [ 3 ],
    "6" : [ 3 ],
    "7" : [ 3 ],
    "8" : [ 3 ],
}

• An array complete_indices of the form:

[ 36 ]

Nodes in our graph correspond to the boards in node_arena, so the first entry in nodes_arena is node 0, the second entry is node 1, and so on. Node 0 is always the empty board (no tiles). An edges s -> t between two nodes indicates that you can get from board s to board t by placing down a tile. Such an edge is recorded in two places: in the edges object (so that t is in edges[s]), and in the rev_edges object (so that s is in rev_edges[t]). Finally, if a complete tiling is possible, its node will be stored in the complete_indices array.

Things to note about tiling graphs:

• If there are a lot of tilings, generating the graph can take a long time, and the resulting graph will generally be large and difficult to work with in memory. This problem is what motivated the --count and --single commands, which avoid generating the entire tile graph.

• Given an edge s -> t we don't store any data on which tile must be placed down to get from board s to board t; this can be recovered by looking at which entries switched from false to true in going from s to t.

• Suppose you wanted to count the number of possible ways to tile a board. Using the graph, one way to do this is as follows:

  • Initialize a hash map count with count[0] = 1 (i.e. there is one way to tile the empty board).
  • Initialize a hash set current_layer with node 0.
  • While current_layer is nonempty:
    • Initialize an empty hash set next_layer.
    • For each node s in current_layer:
      • For each node t in edges[s]:
        • If t is not in count, set count[t] = 0.
        • Increment count[t] by count[s].
        • Add t to next_layer.
    • Set current_layer = next_layer.
  • The total number of tilings will be count[final], where final is the node appearing in complete_indices.

Licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.