Pentominoes

Pentominoes 2.0 is a piece-placing puzzle game by Mark Pilgrim, released in 1995 under MerriMac Software Group. The player must fit twelve pentomino pieces, each made of five unit squares, onto a board with no overlaps. Pieces can be rotated and flipped, but each shape may be placed only once per puzzle.

Twelve Pieces, Many Boards

The classic set of twelve pentominoes admits a famous variety of tilings of rectangles and other shapes. Pentominoes 2.0 ships with over 90 boards built around that set, ranging from straightforward rectangles to more exotic outlines.

Version 2.0 Features

The 2.0 release adds 3-D piece graphics and a built-in board editor on top of the core placement game, letting players design and share their own puzzles. It runs in color or black-and-white, accommodating both newer color Macs and older monochrome screens.

System Requirements and Licensing

Pentominoes requires System 7.0 or later and is released under the GNU General Public License, with source code available alongside the binary, an unusual openness for a 1990s Mac shareware puzzle.

Distribution

The game was uploaded to Info-Mac under game/brd with sources mirrored under dev/src, and Macintosh Garden lists it for System 7 through Mac OS 8.1 on 68k Macs, with notes on Basilisk II and SheepShaver compatibility.