I’m not dead!

In fact, I have a new toy. A staple from my childhood that’s actually even more fun than I remember.

Pattern blocks are little wooden blocks (about 1 cm thick) that come in the following shapes:

• Equilateral triangle, side length 1 unit (green)
• Rhombus, angles 60-120-60-120, side length 1 unit (blue)
• Hexagon, side length 1 unit (yellow)
• Trapezoid, half of a hexagon (red)
• Square, side length 1 unit (orange)
• Rhombus, angles 30-150-30-150, side length 1 unit (white)

The only really fundamental shapes are the triangle, square, and white rhombus; the blue rhombus, trapezoid, and hexagon can all be built from triangles. Having them handy makes the patterns attractive, though.

(The link and the pattern therein does not do them justice. There is also a linked Java applet that really shows a tiny fraction of the neat things you can do, because of limitations as to where the pieces will snap to. Try using the white and green ones together and you’ll quickly see.)

Anyway, I highly recommend them as a gift for everyone you know, especially kids in grades 1-3 and adults that remind you of me.

If you get some, try this riddle: How many (different, rotationally symmetrical) ways can you make a regular dodecagon (12-sided polygon) of side length 1? I was a little surprised to find you can do it at all, but have found at least 3 different ways already. I guess you can do this riddle even without the blocks in front of you, if your spatial/geometrical imagination is much better than mine…