Floret – The Puzzle Pieces
Floret – a puzzle made from irregular pentagons
The basic shape is the Floret pentagon, with one interior angle of 60° and four interior angles of 120°. Six pentagons meet at their 60° corners to form a flower pattern. The puzzle pieces are formed by joining several Floret pentagons along shared edges.
There are 3 diflorets, 8 triflorets, 25 tetraflorets and 80 pentaflorets.
The illustration shows all eight triflorets on the Floret grid.
Floret Puzzles
The Floret grid can be used to make shapes with sixfold, threefold or twofold rotational symmetry. A shape with reflection symmetry made from pentagons joined along edges can only be formed within a single flower of six pentagons.
3D-Printed Puzzle
Only a few shapes with rotational symmetry can be assembled using all eight triflorets. These shapes have only twofold rotational symmetry. A complete set of 25 tetraflorets would contain too many pieces for a puzzle. The 3D-printable puzzle available for download therefore uses a selection of six triflorets and six tetraflorets.
The puzzle shape has sixfold rotational symmetry. The puzzle is difficult to solve and has only eight distinct solutions (with symmetry taken into account: solutions that can be transformed into one another by rotating the puzzle shape are counted only once).
Two Floret Shapes Made from the 12 Puzzle Pieces
The first shape has threefold rotational symmetry, and the second has twofold rotational symmetry.
Resources & Downloads
3D-Printing Templates
The 3D-printing templates include six triflorets, six tetraflorets and a hexagonal box with a sliding lid.
