The three-dimensional pentominoes are, strictly speaking, not pentominoes at all, since pentominoes are by definition two-dimensional objects. They are, in fact, a selection of pentacubes.

Of the 29 pentacubes in total—polyforms composed of five cubes—12 are planar, and these flat pentacubes constitute the so-called “3D pentominoes.”

This page focuses on the genuinely three-dimensional shapes and puzzles; the two-dimensional pentominoes are covered on the Pentomino 2D page.

Pentomino games are available in various versions on the market. If you want to get creative, you can also make them yourself from wooden cubes or produce them with a 3D printer. Suitable 3D-printing templates are available in the download section. All versions can, of course, also be played in two dimensions.

Shapes and Solver Programs
A wide range of shapes exists for the 3D pentominoes. A selection of these can be found on the Pentomino 3D shapes page.

The solver program offered on this website also makes it possible to solve pentomino shapes using a checkerboard pattern.

If the cubes of the pentomino pieces are colored alternately light and dark, a checkerboard pattern is created. Many shapes then have significantly fewer solutions – some even none at all. This makes the puzzle noticeably more difficult.

For each pentomino piece, there are two different ways to apply a checkerboard pattern. This results in a large number of distinct sets of checkerboard-pattern pentomino pieces.

The 3D-print templates consist of the Pentomino puzzle pieces and three boxes.

The Online 3D Pentomino Solver runs directly in your browser – no installation or download required. Shapes can be easily assembled with a simple click and then calculated. Compared to the desktop version, the range of features is slightly streamlined: calculating chessboard pentomino solutions is not supported.

In addition to figures using all 12 pentomino tiles, the program can also calculate solutions for shapes consisting of 2 to 11 tiles.

The results are displayed without symmetry reduction – meaning solutions that result from rotation or reflection are counted as separate solutions.

The solution program for the Pentomino puzzle is part of a collection of programs available for download on Itch.io. It is for Windows only.

IMPORTANT: For a trouble-free installation, please read the instructions before unpacking!