Gigamic Katamino Classic Puzzle and Game

Product Information

A PENTA is a group of several pentaminos which perfectly fills the rectangle bound by the positioning of the slider. Along with a large, full color booklet, the star of Katamino is the brightly colored set of wooden pentominoes all set in a wooden frame. The twelve Pentominoes in the Katamino wooden frame. 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!

In Katamino the term PENTA refers to a group of Pentaminos which completely covers the space defined by the slider on the game board. The other player chooses 1 maroon rectangle and 3 red squares from the small pieces.Then both players choose 1 pentamino at a time in turn until each has 5.A pentamino is a game piece formed by 5 juxtaposed squares with at least one common side. (see exercise 1 and below figures) 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.) There are 12 polygon pieces included in Katamino. Each of these pieces covers 5 spaces on the board and is called a Pentamino.

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. 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. The pieces themselves are made of a lightweight wood. They don’t appear to be carefully cut, however, as I noticed gaps between several of the pieces when they are aligned with each other.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.

The Small Slams consist of 42 PENTAS. To begin your first small slam, Place the slider on the board between numbers 3 and 4, and then take the first 3 Pentaminos shown on the table on line A until column 3 and complete the PENTA 3.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. 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. 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! 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. Position the slider on the board between the numbers 4 and 5 and make as many PENTAS 4 as possible by finding 4 pentaminos among the 12 that can be assembled.