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Squarematch Facts & Figures


In this game you have a board and some colored tiles.
Each tile consists of four squares, colored separately.




The two-color version has these 6 tiles.

and the three-color version 24,
including these 6, one of each type.

The full 70-tile four-color version is a monster, but we examine some subsets.
Counting numbers of tiles

The object of the game is to place the tiles on the interior part of a board, rotating them as necessary, so that wherever two of them meet, the colors match, as in the examples above. With a small set such as those shown, it's not hard. As the set gets larger, it is much more of a challenge. You can try it with the Play applet.

Kadon Enterprises offers the game as a physical set under the name Multimatch II™.

When we speak of solutions to these games, we ignore rotation, reflection, and interchange of colors. All these forms of symmetry simply multiply the number of "interesting" solutions.

There are several 'levels' at which the game can be played:

Easy and Hard Configurations

On the 5x5 board, all placements of the solid tiles lead to solutions.
The easiest and hardest configurations for the solids are:

302 solutions
x        
    x    
         
      x  
         
          13 solutions
         
  x   x  
         
  x      
         

However, on the 4x6 board, there are no solutions with all three solids in corners.
This is a surprising result.
(Well, it is until you think about it.
The four colors in the corners of the rectangle are not paired with adjacent colors. They are paired with each other. If three of the four corners are occupied by three the different colors, the fourth can only pair one of them. The other two would be left as "odd men out". But each color comes in an even number, so that cannot be.)

The easiest and hardest configurations for the solids are:

128 solutions
    x      
          x
    x      
           
      3 solutions
    x      
           
  x     x  
           
      NO solutions !
x         x
           
           
x          

For the 3x8, the hardest and easiest configurations are shown.
Like the 4x6, there are no "all solids in corners" solutions.
Note also the similarity of the configurations for the highest number of solutions with that of the 4x6.

25 solutions
               
  x   x     x  
               
      303 solutions
  x            
               
    x   x      

To see some complete solutions for these configurations, view the Special Solutions page.