Dimorphic

The term dimorphic refers to a "specialised" tile, of which its "line arrangement" permits the possibility of two distinct ways of being "stacked" as a tessellation, this being in contrast to most tiles whereby only one such stacking is possible. As a consequence of this feature, two distinct tessellations thus arise from a single tile. Such a property is very rare, and therefore any tile which possesses this feature is of more interest than for any given, arbitrary tile. Furthermore, on account of the rarity factor, the addition of life-like motifs to the such tiles is difficult to achieve. Indeed, it is hard to find any such examples at all. Therefore, such life-like examples are of more interest than in normal circumstances.

Some further examples of dimorphic tiles can be found in the book Tilings and Patterns, pages 46-49, albeit the background to these, and indeed the whole book, is of a decidedly advanced nature.

The example above utilises a dimorphic tile apparently devised by Percy MacMahon, of which I myself show a bird motif "of sorts," albeit somewhat limited as regards the quality � as such, of necessity a "compromise" is in order, as previously discussed. Now, in normal circumstances such a relatively poor quality bird motif would be deemed "borderline" as to whether or not I would produce a "finished" example. However, due to the above detailed "rarity" factor, such shortcomings can be overlooked on occasions, as with this example.