The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. If you want to tile a bathroom floor, square tiles are the simplest option—they fit together without any gaps in a grid pattern that can ...

In the world of tile patterns, there's always been super-uniform (e.g. stacked subway tile) and super-custom (e.g. a black-and-white line drawing on the floor), and not much else in between. But we're ...

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