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npodbielskitoday at 6:52 AM3 repliesview on HN

Why 4 is trivial but 6 had to be proved?


Replies

throawayonthetoday at 1:26 PM

i believe 4, 9, 16, 25 etc are just subdivisions of the unit square (they're perfect squares)

but the text also says "For the $n ≤ 324$ not pictured, the trivial packing (with no tilted squares) is the best known packing." applying 'trivial' to numbers that aren't perfect squares so iunno

smrqtoday at 7:43 AM

The 4 packing takes up 100% of its square; it's trivially optimal. The 6 packing only takes up 2/3 of it, so it's not necessarily obvious that you can't do better.