Questions
Tatamibari — 畳ばり — is a Japanese tiling puzzle about cutting a floor into mats.
- What is Tatamibari?
- Tatamibari is a Japanese logic puzzle published by Nikoli. You cut the grid into rectangles so that every rectangle holds exactly one of the printed symbols, and the symbol tells you what shape that rectangle has to be. One further rule keeps the tiling honest: four rectangles may never meet at a single point.
- What do the three symbols mean?
- A plus means the rectangle is a square, the same number of cells across as it is down. A vertical bar means it is taller than it is wide. A horizontal bar means it is wider than it is tall. A bar never means a single line of cells in particular — a 2×5 block is just as tall as a 1×5 one.
- Why can four rectangles not meet at a corner?
- The puzzle is a floor and the rectangles are tatami mats. Japanese rooms are laid so that mats never meet four to a point, and the puzzle keeps that rule. In practice it is the constraint that does most of the work, because it rules out tidy-looking arrangements that satisfy everything else.
- Can a rectangle be a single cell?
- Yes. One cell is a 1×1 square, so a single cell holding a plus is a perfectly good rectangle. It cannot hold a bar, though, because a 1×1 is neither taller nor wider.
- Can a rectangle contain a symbol it does not own?
- No. Each rectangle contains exactly one symbol. If a rectangle you have drawn swallows two symbols it is wrong however well its shape matches, and that is often the quickest way to eliminate a candidate.
- Does every cell belong to a rectangle?
- Yes. The rectangles tile the whole grid with no gaps and no overlaps, so there are exactly as many rectangles as there are symbols.
- Is there always exactly one answer?
- Yes. Every puzzle here is put through a solver before it is banked, and only puzzles with a single answer are kept.
- Do I need an account?
- No. Nothing to sign up for, nothing to install. Your progress is kept in your own browser.