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Word Ways

Authors

A. Ross Eckler

Abstract

It is well known that hexagons can be used to tile a flat surface with no space left over. If letters are inscribed in the hexagons, a three-letter word can be formed by a set of three hexagons meeting at a common point. No rearrangement of letters is necessary; the word can always be spelled out by going either clockwise or counterclockwise around the point. Because this property does not hold for square tiling (four-letter words) or triangular tiling (six-letter words), hexagonal tiling is uniquely suited for the various letter patterns we described in this article.

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