Pentomino
BGG rank
BGG #14,128
BGG rating
7.0

Pentomino

1969

Rules assistance for Pentomino

Plain-language explanations of turns, card effects and disputed situations, with official source references and saved question history.

  • 2 players
  • 10 min
  • 7+

For 2 players

Rules assistant for Pentomino

What would you like to know?

Answers come from the official rulebook, with the page to check.

Pentomino is a board game released in 1969 for 2 players, 10 minutes per game, and ages 7 and up. It was designed by Solomon W. Golomb and its main mechanics are Tile Placement.

Similar games

About the game

Similar to Pan-Kai by Alex Randolph with two differences. Pentomino is played on a 8 x 8 grid and contains the 12 pentomino tiles plus 12 cards to distribute six pentominoes to each player before the game. Players now alternately place one piece per turn on the board, until no tile can be placed anymore. The player who placed more tiles than the other, wins. The original Pentominoes without the cards and tiles was solved by computers (http://www.msri.org/publications/books/Book29/files/orman.pdf); this version published by Zimpfer in 1969 contains 12 cards to randomly distribute the tiles between the players, making it an all new game.

Publishers

  • Zimpfer Metallwarenfabrik

Questions and answers

Pentomino supports 2 players according to the catalogue. This is the publisher’s listed player count, so the game is designed for exactly that number of participants. Variants for other group sizes, if any, are described in the rulebook of your edition, so check it before setting up a different configuration.