Gigamic Katamino Classic Puzzle and Game

Product Information

In Katamino the term PENTA refers to a group of Pentaminos which completely covers the space defined by the slider on the game board. When you are ready for more challenges, start again on Line B, Line C and so on, until you have completed Line G. Once the 7 Lines are completed, the player has solved 42 PENTAS and completed their SMALL SLAM. Congratulations! You should try the more difficult challenges!

Once this PENTA is completed, move the slider up one space between numbers 4 and 5, add the Pentamino shown in Column 4 of Line A to the three pieces you just used , and then complete the PENTA 4 with those 4 pieces.Each row of challenges starts off with a specific set of pentominoes. Set aside the other pentominoes and move the wooden bar from its position to the right of 12 to the number of pieces being used.

If you take five identical squares and arrange them in different 2D shapes, you’ll end up with 18 different shapes. Twelve of these look the same regardless as to how you orient them, while six can be flipped over to create a mirror image of themselves. Choose one each of the mirrored image shapes and add them to the twelve others and you’ll have what is known as a set of Pentominoes. A PENTA is a group of several pentaminos which perfectly fills the rectangle bound by the positioning of the slider. The pieces are painted in bright, kid-friendly colors. The frame is solid, with a grid painted onto the bottom to help you count/visualize the number of squares needed to be filled. Games featuring polyominoes have gained in popularity in recent years. Patchwork was one of the first to catch my eye, but there have been a great many others like New York Zoo, A Feast for Odin, The Isle of Cats, Ubongo!, and My City. My fellow Meeple Mountaineer, David McMillian even penned a polyomino Step Ladder article a few years ago. The frame for Katamino is a 5×12 grid. All 12 pieces fit into this grid nicely. (In over 4000 combinations, as it turns out.)

Even More Challenges

For even more challenges, try to complete as many PENTAS as possible with all the pieces, progressively moving the slider up to increase the difficulty. This Katamino edition has thousands of possible combinations! Take, for example, this simple three-piece puzzle The same initial three pieces with a fourth added.

Intermediate puzzles start with five pieces and advanced puzzles start with seven or nine pieces. But Is Katamino a Game? Katamino rule book’s board for Golomb’s Game This sole game really doesn’t do much to change the fact that Katamino is really presented as a series of 2D puzzles, each set within a 5x grid. The piece must lay flat and completely inside the grid area. The second player then selects a pentamino and does the same. The winner is the last player to place a Pentamino completely on the grid.

How to Play with One Player

There are 12 polygon pieces included in Katamino. Each of these pieces covers 5 spaces on the board and is called a Pentamino. When considering Katamino, I am reminded of the two MazeScape puzzles I reviewed last year. They were unique, clever puzzles that I enjoyed working on over the course of a few weeks. Those, however, were strictly puzzles. What about Katamino? Use all the pieces, except for pentaminos 1 and 12. One of the 2 players chooses 1 maroon rectangle, 1 maroon square and 2 red squares from the small pieces. A pentamino is a game piece formed by 5 juxtaposed squares with at least one common side. (see exercise 1 and below figures)