The Stomachion navigator page is designed to let you tour the enormous possibilities and remarkable properties of stomachions while putting control in your hands. Customize the size and other display features by selecting from the available options, and save the resulting pages and images by copying the links.
The Stomachion is a puzzle described by the Greek mathematician Archimedes in the 3rd century BC. It consists of 14 geometric pieces which fit together to form a square. The original texts have survived only fragmentarily and the 17152 solutions to the challenge were discovered only in 2003.
Several factors contribute to this great number. There are 3 triangles that only fit in combination with another piece because they share a unique angle, in effect reducing the problem to only 11 pieces. There are 3 pairs of identical triangles that can be considered interchangeable twins, which cuts the number of solutions in half three times. If rotations and reflections are considered identical, the total number of squares is reduced by another factor of eight. This leaves 268 unique stomachions.
By exchanging two pieces, or reflecting a distinct (isosceles triangular, rectangular or parallelogramic) segment of the square, one configuration turns into another. In this fashion 266 of the 268 stomachional squares are linked to one another and can be cycled through along what is known as a Hamiltonian path in mathematical jargon. The remaining two squares form a Hamiltonian mini-loop.
Display options (key):
Pieces (P): draw the reduced 11 or the original 14 pieces.
Orientation: rotate and reverse the complete square.
Variation: exchange one, two or all of the pairs of twinned triangles.
Overlay (V): label the pieces or the complete square.
Grid (G): indicate the 12x12 unit matrix of lattice points.
Square size (S): shrink or enlarge the square from 16 to 1600 pixels.
Colours (C): choose a colour scheme to help identify the pieces.
Line width (W): set the thickness of the boundary line between the pieces.
Line colour (U): choose the colour of the boundary line between the pieces.
Layout (A): choose a collection of related squares, or a number of squares and number of rows.
Menu (): hide the navigation from view when not used.
Autotour (T): enjoy a slideshow of automatically refreshing pages.
Other shortcut keys:
B, arrow-left: Previous square
N, arrow-right: Next square
E: Select by number
1: First square
L: Rotate 90° left
R: Rotate 90° right
D: Rotate 180°
M: Mirror
F: Flip
H: Show help
O: Show options
#la
the 11
all 14
#or
normal
rotated right
rotated 180°
rotated left
mirrored
right mirrored
flipped
left mirrored
#tw
none
large
medium
large 2
small
large small
small 2
all
#po
none
square name
square number
capitals by area
capitals top down
letters by area
letters top down
Greek capitals
Greek top down
greek letters
greek top down
numbers top down
numbers bottom up
area proportions
area ratios
angles
names
custom
#grid
none
points
dashes
lines
#skin
blue
mono
moonlight
pastel
standard
custom
#lw
0
1 pixel
2 pixels
3 pixels
#cl
black
blue
crimson
cyan
darkblue
darkgreen
darkred
dimgray
dodgerblue
firebrick
fuchsia
gold
gray
green
indigo
ivory
khaki
lightblue
lightcyan
lime
maroon
navy
none
olive
orchid
pink
plum
purple
red
salmon
silver
slateblue
slategray
springgreen
steelblue
tan
teal
thistle
turquoise
violet
white
yellow
none
custom
#m
1 square
all rotations
all reflections
all twins
2 squares
2x2 squares
2x4 squares
12 squares
16 squares
67 squares
134 squares
268 squares
custom
1 square
#hm
always
auto
no
#tick
off
1 second
2 seconds
3 seconds
4 seconds
10 seconds
30 seconds