https://erikdemaine.org/fonts/ Mathematical and Puzzle Fonts/Typefaces Erik Demaine, Martin Demaine, and others Scientists use fonts every day to express their research through the written word. But what if the font itself communicated (the spirit of) the research? What if the way text is written, and not just the text itself, engages the reader in the science? Below are mathematical typefaces we designed through inspiration which are inspired by mathematical theorems or open problems. Most include a puzzle font: reading them is itself a mathematical puzzle. All fonts are available to play with as web applications which run entirely in your (modern) browser, including iOS and Android. For more information, read our paper "Fun with Fonts: Algorithmic Typography" and other papers listed below, or check out media coverage in The New York Times, Science News (text available here), and Gizmodo. --------------------------------------------------------------------- [Integer Sequence Font written in integer sequence font] Integer sequence font by Eric Angelini, Erik Demaine, Martin Demaine, and Carole Dubois, 2023 * Letters, words, or text plotted by a finite sequence of integers. * Self-plotting infinite integer sequence rejected by the OEIS. [Fold N Cut Font written in orthogonal fold & cut font] Orthogonal fold & cut font by Joshua Ani, Josh Brunner, Erik Demaine, Martin Demaine, Dylan Hendrickson, Victor Luo, and Rachana Madhukara, 2022. * Each letter is made from a square of paper by a sequence of orthogonal folds followed by one straight cut. [Yin-Yang font written in Yin-Yang font] Yin-Yang font by Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine, 2021. * Each letter is an interactive Yin-Yang puzzle whose unique solution forms the image of the letter. [Sudoku font written in Sudoku font] Sudoku font by Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine, 2021. * Solve each Sudoku puzzle; then the longest path through consecutive adjacent numbers (differing by exactly 1 in edge-adjacent squares) draws each letter. [Everything/Typography written in Everything font] Everything font by Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine, 2021. * Every letter-shaped piece of paper can be folded into every other letter (slightly smaller), via an intermediate "E" shape. [Tiling font written in Tiling font] Tiling font by Erik Demaine, Martin Demaine, Scott Kim, and Yushi Uno , 2021. * Each letter tiles the infinite plane without gaps. [Path puzzles font written in Tatamibari font] Path Puzzles font by Jeffrey Bosboom, Erik Demaine, Martin Demaine, Adam Hesterberg, Roderick Kimball, and Justin Kopinsky, 2020. * Each letter is an interactive path puzzle whose unique solution forms the path of the letter. [Tatamibari font written in Tatamibari font] Tatamibari font by Aviv Adler, Jeffrey Bosboom, Erik Demaine, and Martin Demaine, Quanquan Liu, and Jayson Lynch, 2020. * Each letter is an interactive Tatamibari puzzle whose unique solution forms the image of the letter. [Tetris font written in Tetris font] Tetris font by Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine, 2020. * Each letter is built by dropping exactly one of each of the seven Tetris (tetromino) pieces in some sequence. [Cube folding font written in cube folding font] Cube folding font by Oswin Aichholzer, Hugo Akitaya, Kenneth Cheung, Erik Demaine, Martin Demaine, Sandor Fekete, Linda Kleist, Irina Kostitsyna, Maarten Loffler, Zuzana Masarova, Klara Mundilova, and Christiane Schmidt, 2019. * Each letter is a puzzle: can you fold it into a 1 x 1 x 1 cube? [Impossible folding font written in impossible folding font] Impossible folding font by Erik Demaine, Martin Demaine, Tomoko Taniguchi, and Ryuhei Uehara, 2019. * Each letter is an impossible object called a hypercard: it can be cut and folded from a single square of paper, even though the vertical flap cannot be flattened into the horizontal plane without material overlapping. [Dissection font written in dissection font] Dissection font by Erik Demaine, Martin Demaine, Donald E. Knuth, and Yushi Uno, 2018. * Each letter can be dissected into a 6 x 6 square. * Three different fonts uses exactly 2, 3, or 4 pieces in each dissection. [Ada font written in Ada font] Ada font by Ada Bienkowska, Erik Demaine, and Martin Demaine, 2018. * Each letter is made up of two simple symbols: a U shape and a line. Both symbols are in every letter, and every U shape has exactly the same proportions; the shapes are just rotated and/or scaled. * Puzzle and animation fonts can be made by rotating the basic symbols. [Checkers font written in Checkers font] Checkers font by Jeffrey Bosboom, Spencer Congero, Erik Demaine, and Martin Demaine, and Jayson Lynch, 2018. * Each letter is an 8 x 8 cooperative always-jumping checkers puzzle. The solution sequence can be animated! * Such puzzles are NP-complete in general, as proved in our paper " Losing at Checkers is Hard". [Spiral Galaxies font written in Spiral Galaxies font] Spiral Galaxies font by Walker Anderson, Erik Demaine, and Martin Demaine, 2018. * Each letter is a Spiral Galaxies puzzle whose unique solution forms the image of the letter. * You can interactively solve the puzzles. [One-Fold Silhouette Font written in one-fold silhouette font] One-fold silhouette font by Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine, 2018. * Each letter is formed by folding two translucent symbols on top of each other, as in silhouette puzzles. [Coin Sliding Font written in coin sliding font] Coin sliding font by Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine, 2018. * Every pair of characters forms a coin-sliding puzzle, as analyzed by Demaine, Demaine, and Verrill (2000). * You can play all 2,664 puzzles on the web or on Android and try to set a fewest-moves record! [String Art Font written in string art font] String art font by Erik Demaine, Martin Demaine, and Petros Vrellis, 2017. * In one font (shown), each letter is a thread wrapped 1,500 times around 200 pins. * In other fonts, each letter is a thread wrapped around just 22 pins, and involves puzzles related to Euler tours. [Strip Folding Font written in strip folding font] Strip folding font by Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine, 2017. * An entire sequence of letters folds from a single strip of paper. [Voronoi Font written in Voronoi font] Voronoi font by Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine, 2017. * Each letter is the Voronoi diagram of a set of points. [Fold N Punch Font written in fold & punch font] Fold and punch font by Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine, 2017. * Each letter from a square of paper by a sequence of simple folds followed by one circular hole-punch. [Fold N Cut Font written in simple fold & cut font] Simple fold & cut font by Erik Demaine, Martin Demaine, and Katie Steckles, 2016. * Each letter is made from a square of paper by a sequence of simple folds followed by one straight cut. [Tangle font written in 56-Tangle font] Tangle font by Erik Demaine, Martin Demaine, and Ronald Taylor, 2016. * Each letter is a flat configuration of a Tangle of identical length, presented graphically or as a NSEW sequence. [Juggling font, trajectory and still-of-animation form] Juggling font by Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine, 2015. * Each letter is a juggling pattern, animated by the Juggling Lab software or summarized by a single image of the ball trajectories. [Card shuffling font, without intermediate permutations] Card shuffling font by Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine, 2015. * By a sequence of perfect shuffles of 26 cards labeled A through Z, the magician can present the letters of your message in order. [Glass cane font, solved and puzzle form] Glass cane font by Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine, 2014. * Each letter is a glass cane, a cylinder of glass made by pulling and twisting an arrangement of straight lines of colored glass embedded within clear glass, as simulated by our Virtual Glass software. [Linkage font, puzzle form] [Linkage font, solved form] Linkage font by Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine, 2014. * Each letter/number is a fixed-angle linkage (which model protein folding) designed so that random configurations can be uniquely decoded back to text. [Glass squishing font, unsquished form] [Glass squishing font, squished form] Penland glass squishing font by Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine, 2014. * Hot glass components are arranged (in the puzzle font) so that squishing them horizontally produces a letter (in the clear font) * Video font illustrates physical squishing to form the letters [Origami maze font, crease-pattern form [Origami maze font, 2D form Origami maze font by Erik Demaine, Martin Demaine, and Jason Ku, 2010. * The font can be folded as extruded letters from a rectangle of paper, using an algorithm for folding orthogonal graphs by the same authors. [Conveyer belt font, puzzle form] [Conveyer belt font, solved form] Conveyer belt font by Erik Demaine, Martin Demaine, and Belen Palop, 2008. * The form without the belts (lines) is a puzzle to decode, based on a mathematical open problem by Manuel Abellanas first posed in 2001. [Hinged dissection font] Hinged dissection font by Erik Demaine and Martin Demaine, 2003. * One hinged chain of (128) pieces folds into any of the letters in the alphabet as well as a square. Other Related Fonts Here are some other fonts in the same genre as the mathematical/ puzzle fonts above, but by other people. [Peg solitaire font] Peg solitaire font by Taishi Oikawa, Kazuaki Yamazaki, Tomoko Taniguchi, and Ryuhei Uehara, BRIDGES 2017. * Each letter is a reachable pattern in the game of Peg Solitaire from an initially full 5 x 7 board. * The puzzle is to figure out how to reach each such pattern! [3x5 origami font] 3 x 5 origami font by Yoshihisa Matsukawa and Jun Mitani, 2016. * Each letter is the silhouette of a flat origami folded from a 3 x 5 box-pleated grid. * Based on an enumeration of all such silhouettes by Matsukuwa, Yamamoto, and Mitani, which appears at ICGG 2016. Papers Here are papers we have written about mathematical/puzzle fonts/ typefaces, including both surveys and research papers that include fonts: * "Orthogonal Fold & Cut", arXiv:2202.01293, 2022. * "Universal Hinge Patterns for Folding Strips Efficiently into Any Grid Polyhedron", Computational Geometry: Theory and Applications , 89:101633, 2020. * "Impossible Folding Font", in Proceedings of 22nd Annual Conference of BRIDGES: Mathematics, Music, Art, Architecture, Culture (BRIDGES 2019), 2019. * "2,664 Coin-Sliding Font Puzzles", Exchange Book of the 13th Gathering for Gardner, April 2018. * "Spiral Galaxies Font", MOVES 2017: The Mathematics of Various Entertaining Subjects, volume 3. * "Losing at Checkers is Hard", MOVES 2017: Mathematics of Various Entertaining Subjects, volume 3. * "Folding and Punching Paper", Journal of Information Processing, 25:590-600, 2017. * "Juggling and Card Shuffling Meet Mathematical Fonts", Connections in Discrete Mathematics: In Honor of Ron Graham's 80th Birthday, 2018. * "Fun with Fonts: Algorithmic Typography", Theoretical Computer Science, 586:111-119, 2015. * "Tangled Tangles", MOVES 2015: Mathematics of Various Entertaining Subjects, volume 2. * "Linkage Font", in Exchange Book of the 11th Gathering for Gardner (G4G11), March 2014. * "Origami Maze Puzzle Font", in Exchange Book of the 9th Gathering for Gardner (G4G9), 2010. * "Conveyer Belt Alphabet Font", in Exchange Book of the 9th Gathering for Gardner (G4G9), 2010. * "Conveyer-Belt Alphabet", in Findings on Elasticity, 2010. * "Hinged Dissection of the Alphabet", Journal of Recreational Mathematics, 31(3):204-207, 2003. Last updated May 22, 2023 by Erik Demaine. -- Accessibility