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In 2021, John Greening surprised us with this shapely figure built of the 66 octiamonds and added this note: "This is my favorite of all the sets and I call it the grandfather set because the set is balanced with even parity, there are no holes and all pieces tile the plane. 12-fold symmetry is also possible with this set."

Congratulations, John. That is a thing of beauty, coaxing all different shapes into exquisite collaboration. And you solve these without a computer, so double wow.
At the end of October 2022, John Greening amazed us once again with this magnificent solution of a giant snowflake. It took him about a week to solve by hand, with a clever shuffle of the last six pieces. What a marvel! And a few months later, his superbly symmetrical Star arrived.


In September 2021, John Greening produced his most amazing result to date: the Hendekiamond Ring, consisting of 1186 different tiles, each 11 triangles in size. At this scale, even more pieces with holes showed up, and John succeeded in arranging all 38 holes (covering 52 unit triangle spaces) in symmetrical locations around the inner and outer perimeter. He even found solutions where the outer triangle holes point either in or out. It took John several months to construct this ring to fit exactly around the previous nested rings (see above), working with painstakingly hand-cut pieces.
Rumors came that John was already tackling the next size upthe order-12 polyiamonds with 3,334 different tilesis that a world record yet?to be achieved by hand, not by computer. After several weeks, John completed the full ring, with symmetrical arrangements of the pieces with holes. Few humans can equal such a superachievement. To assist in his recording, John built a workboard six feet in diameter, showing the entire solution as it emerged. See the close-up of a smaller section below. See also a close-up of the section around 5 o'clock, where most of the chunky tiles cluster, John's strategy for grouping the easiest pieces for the last. Congratulations, John! You are our greatest winner.
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