Flat Legos

Hi,
It's been a while since I used legos -- do they have flat pieces (without the connecting prongs)? I ask because I'm trying to build a set of pentominoes (sorta like tetris) and I need the pieces to "fit" together without attaching them, and the prongs make balancing difficult.
Is there a name for these flat pieces? Any Lego sets that would/would not carry them?
Thanks in advance.

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Search www.bricklink.com for tiles. http://shop.lego.com/ also has tiles, click on bricks & pieces by shape.
Or if you actually want sets, search www.peeron.com. Then you can buy at ebay or bricklink.

Kay Archer wrote:
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Are tiles the pieces that receive prongs on the bottom, but are smooth and flat on top? Do they have the same height as a "plate" would have if you ground away the prongs?
Bob H

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tiles,
yes, yes.
If you go to the link on shop.lego.com, you could see some pictures, ditto for searching for tile on www.bricklink.com and www.peeron.com.

On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote:
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Yes, in various sizes and colors. There are also 2x1 "grill" pieces which don't have prongs but aren't flat either. :)
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This suggests you're trying to "stack" the pentominoes, for which you'll be wanting perfect cubes. Perfect cubes are hard to make with Legos, IIRC (although maybe 4 flats x 2x2 prongs gets you close). When I made my set of pentominoes, I just used 1xN bricks, two bricks high each, and played only in 2D. I would draw an example, but Legos are hard in ASCII.
If you want just 2D, un-stackable pentominoes, plain old cardboard is a lot more wieldy.
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Most sets have at least a few. You can often direct-order specific pieces, or mixtures of pieces, from the company itself; look online or in a catalog.
-Arthur

you mean the flat tile plates
is it like 3d tetris casue if its 2d tetris you can just use the sides of the pieces and have the studs aiming at you

snipped-for-privacy@wongfaye.com ( snipped-for-privacy@wongfaye.com) wrote in message
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It is like 3D tetris. I made 2D tetris pieces, although the (generic) set I used didn't have 1x1 prongs, so some pieces look funny. That's what I get for trying to save a buck :). That and none of the colors fully spans the arity of the prongs (eg: there's a 2x4 white, but no 2x2 white, etc...). I think I used the "Mega Blocks" brand.
Thanks.

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote:
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Heresy! (Seriously, support your friendly local Real LEGO Brand Lego supplier. Otherwise they'll just keep cranking out Harry Potter sets and ugly robot kits until they stagnate and die.)
By the way, it apparently *is* possible to build perfect cubes in Lego, but I got the dimensions wrong: cube is 5 flats x 2x2 prongs, not 4 flats. Here's the website of a guy who does a lot of cubes:
http://www.ericharshbarger.org/lego/puzzles.html
HTH, -Arthur

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oh youre in the wrong group you want rec.toys.chinesejunkcopylego
just for kicks last night i made the tetris pieces also with 2x4s and 2x2s they are all 2 bricks high and i used the colors white,black,red,blue,yellow,green,brown
but when you go into 3d tetris the 2 mirror image pieces are removed(since you can rotate and flip) and the 3 new 3d pieces are added to there is only 8 pieces in 3d terris and i didnt use grey yet so that could be the extra piece color
for the 7 pieces my biggest gripe is the lack of bottom tiles i was chopping baseplates up for bottom smoothness but they are only grey,green,blue(at least what i have)
its quite hard to make a small perfect cube heck i could make a perfect cube but it needs to be like 5 inches and you need to put the thing in a press to close up the gaps just enough to match it up but i'm talkin tolerances that are .001 which you can cheat with some fine sandpaper
and dont thing about making them balanced enough to make dice cause as good as they are they are still inconsistant in thickness and density
i hold lego in the highest esteem but when you are checkin pieces with a micrometer and digital scale you are are asking way too much
as fro megabloks good luck finding 2 pieces the same shade of color buch less the fit
the tyco pieces gave 1/2 high plates and that gave some more play
you can get close to a small cube with 3x3 and a plate on top the studs height really close to its width

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Kadon sells 3-D pentominoes, BTW:
http://gamepuzzles.com/polycube.htm#Q

snipped-for-privacy@cstone.net (David J Bush) wrote in message
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were you making the shapes with 1x1 being the square? i made mne with 1 square bein 2x2

On Mon, 28 Jun 2004, snipped-for-privacy@wongfaye.com wrote: [Someone else wrote:]
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Yes, that's the way to go. 5x2x2 is a perfect cube, as far as I can measure. Thus 2.5x1x1 *would* be a perfect cube, but there aren't any Lego pieces with only half the height of a single plate.
You mentioned in another post that 5x2x2 was *not* a perfect cube when examined at microscopic levels; is that right? It's certainly close enough for Lego work (make a single cube and a cubic slot --- the cube will fit nicely in all 6 orientations).
-Arthur

wrote:
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(generic)
That's
colors
Tyco and some other clone _plates_ are 1/2 the height of a _brick_.