23 May 2026

Tessellated pavement tiles in Granada


It just absolutely fascinates me that each of these hexagonal tiles has the same pattern, but that the resultant overall result can be so variable.

Tessellation longread in Wikipedia.

7 comments:

  1. This reminds me of us human beings, where we are all individually recognisable as the same beings, but together we magically fabricate wonderful intricacies beyond imagination.

    Well, except in the U.S.A.'s current administration, obviously, where rather than make something beautiful all they want to do is slather themselves in more wealth and power.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hexagonal tiles of this sort are called "serpentiles": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpentiles

    They are the main elements of several strategy games, including Kaliko, which I played as a teenager (although I didn't realize until just now that it originated in 1968!).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for the link, Jeffo. I've played one of those online strategy games in the past, but don't remember the name.

      Delete
  3. Yes to everything Mr. Rocket said above.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Looks like my attempt to unravel the power cord for the lawnmower.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love patterns like these. Let's see, how many possibilities are there? As far as I can tell, the tiles have six unique rotations, so I'm guessing it's 6^n (where n = the total number of tiles). That's ummm, a lot :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oooh, I just discovered that someone made an online app for designing patterns like these: https://andypryke.github.io/Apps/HexTiles/

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...