Bio

Jared Wasserman is a rising sophomore at Columbia Preparatory School in New York City. He enjoys math, science, computer programming, web design and learning Japanese. He is involved in his school’s computer science club, student government and television station, and he plays varsity ice hockey. In his spare time, he works on computer programming, explores interesting problems in math and cheers for the New York Rangers. Jared is excited to further improve his math and computer skills this summer.

Project: Tiling Polyominoes Game

Polyominoes are a collection of n squares of equal size that are arranged with coincident sides. Think of them as an extension of dominoes. In this demonstration, a random tiling of adjacent, non-overlapping polyominoes (ranging from four squares to eight squares in size) are produced. The polyominoes are randomly rotated (in 90-degree steps) and placed on a grid. The user is given the polyominoes that were used to tile the grid and has to cover the tiled area (gray) by moving and rotating all of the blocks. The difficulty level ranges from one to five, with an increasing number of blocks to tile in a larger grid. To get a polyomino from the right onto the grid, you just need to click it. After you place a polyomino on the grid, you can click its shaded version on the right to rotate it in the grid. To move a polyomino, just click and drag it around in the grid. When the puzzle is successfully tiled, you will be given a congratulatory message, along with the time it took you to complete it.