Truchet Cubes

In May 2022, I gave a talk Play Truchet: fun with tiling patterns and generalizations at the Museum of Math (MoMath) as a part of their Math Encounters series. In that talk I presented a fun way of making small cubes decorated with Truchet patterns. I designed a page (now updated) that allowed participants to cut out six strips that could be folded and assembled into a cube (based on a design by Paul Jackson). I also met of C.S. Smith's gradson, who introduced me at the event, and learned more about the amazing work of C.S. Smith.

Here are pages you can print to create your own Truchet blocks. Click the image for a link to a pdf file. Each page has 12 strips, enough for 2 cubes. The resulting cubes are about 1.75 inches (4.5 cm) per side. I encourage you to explore the patterns you can create!

Assembly

Download a printable page, cut into strips, then assemble following the directions described in the video How to make paper cube easy way. Also see this wikibook article.

Activities

The blocks made from the Smith's filled variant pattern and the Filled line segments can be assembled in multiple ways, assuming unlimited strips of different types. Colin Beveridge wrote an article Too good to be Truchet for Chalkdust Magazine and shows there are 10 ways of assembling these cubes. Can you make all of them?

Related information

See page on Truchet tiles for related information.