Pentominos

A puzzle solver you watch rather than play. Twelve five-square pieces must fill a rectangle of 3 by 20, 4 by 15, 5 by 12 or 6 by 10, a problem discussed in Arthur C. Clarke's novel Imperial Earth. The program works like a person without intuition: it fills the upper-left empty square, tries each unused piece in each rotation, and backs out at a dead end, showing every move. The author suggested leaving it to run overnight.

Controls: Menus use the stick and fire; keypad * returns to the menu while solving.

ColecoVision version credited in the project source to Amy Bienvenu, 2026: a port of the published listing. From COMPUTE! magazine, May 1984, pages 192: original program by Jim Butterfield. Published for Commodore computers, Atari, IBM PC/PCjr, TI-99/4A, TRS-80 Color Computer, Apple. This is a modern homebrew adaptation, not a commercial Coleco release. Amy Studio's project documentation acknowledges AI assistance in its development tools and example cleanup; no AI credit specific to this title was found.