Tiling is a joyful kind of thinking—rotate, connect, and see what you can create.
What is the Spectre?
The Spectre is a single 13‑vertex shape that can tile the plane. In this playground each tile
can be rotated (and mirrored), letting you explore how simple rules can create surprisingly rich
patterns.
Goal
Build clusters, grow layers, and remix your own motifs. There is no “wrong” move—try bold
compositions, then recolor to make the structure pop.
Controls (desktop)
- Click a tile to select, drag to move.
- Shift‑click / ⌘‑click to multi‑select tiles (drag/rotate/delete as a group).
- Hold Shift and drag on empty space to box‑select tiles.
- ⌘+C / Ctrl+C copies selection; ⌘+V / Ctrl+V pastes.
- Ctrl+G groups the selection; Ctrl+D ungroups.
- R rotates counter‑clockwise 30°, T clockwise.
- Delete/Backspace removes the selected tile(s).
- A adds a new vivid Spectre tile at the cursor.
- Right‑click a tile to remove it.
- Hold Space (or middle‑click) and drag to pan; use the mouse wheel to zoom.
- Hold Alt to temporarily disable snapping while dragging or dropping.
- ← goes back in history; → goes forward.
Controls (touch)
- Tap a tile to select; drag to move.
- Drag on empty space to box‑select tiles (or toggle Box).
- Pinch (two fingers) to pan/zoom.
- Press‑and‑hold to open the circular menu.
- In Rotate mode: swipe left/right to rotate; tap to exit.
- Double‑tap to open the quick circular menu (Add / Del / Structures).
References
-
Spectre page (original paper landing page):
cs.uwaterloo.ca/~csk/spectre
-
Official publication: A chiral aperiodic monotile (2024) — Smith, David; Myers, Joseph
Samuel; Kaplan, Craig S.; Goodman‑Strauss, Chaim. © 2024 by the author(s).
doi:10.5070/C64264241
TILE format
TILE is plain text with lines in the form id,x,y,rotStep,mirror,hue. You can edit
it in a text editor and load it back into the app.
App
Bartosz Naskręcki © 2026