Windows95-users: resize the applet window after it appears to get the right colours.
Pentominoes is a jigsaw puzzle involving twelve rectilinear pieces. These pieces constitute all the ways in which five squares may be arranged with their edges matching. Their total area is 5 x 12 = 60 squares. The challenge is to fit the twelve pieces into a rectangle. The possible sizes for the rectangle are:
The pieces may be freely moved, rotated and flipped over. All these operations may be done using the mouse---let me know if you dislike the approach I took to enabling so many operations using just the mouse.
There are many solutions to the problem, ranging from just two for the 3 x 20 rectangle, to over 2000 for the 6 x 10 rectangle. Despite this, the problem is amazingly difficult, and I'd be glad to know if you find any solutions, or have comments in general about about this Java implementation or the game of pentominoes (or even life in general).
The code may be viewed here: pento/ and util/.