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Einstein Origami: Paper Puzzles and Games by Sy Chen

Amy R.’s recommendation for the 510 Club | JUne 2026

 

Cover of "Einstein Origami" by Sy Chen. The book is a pale blue and tiled with copies of the "Einstein" a.k.a. aperiodic "hat" tile, with bright foreground images of tilings made from origami including yellow and blue Penrose tiling, and a red/orange "turtle" variation of the Einstein tiling. A white badge to the upper right of the cover proclaims "30 paper tangrams, mosaics and other brainteasers!"

Einstein Origami provides a really enjoyable way to engage with the maths behind tiling and tessellation, giving well produced instructions on how to fold different shaped tiles from square paper (or American one dollar bills), with each origami tile followed by a series of challenges and puzzles to complete with that tile shape. I found the way the tiles and challenges built upon previous ones made me notice the different shapes inside each tile – I really enjoyed first creating an einstein hat shape from kite-shaped tiles and then creating hat-shaped tiles from a single piece of paper.

I would recommend this book for anyone who likes the challege and satisfaction of learning to fold origami shapes and wants to explore the geometry of tiling, likes jigsaw or tangram puzzles, or has a friend who likes these puzzles!

 

 

WHAT IS THE 510 CLUB?

The 510 Club is named after the Dewey Decimal classification for Mathematics. It is a book recommendation project facilitated by Mathateca in collaboration with Christchurch MathsJam. Each month we feature a mathematical book recommendation, whether that’s a novel, articles / essays, a puzzle book, textbook, biography... just as long as it features maths in some way. Read the above book at your leisure then come along to the following Christchurch MathsJam sessions to join in an informal maths/book chat with the reviewer.

We're always looking for suggestions! If you're interested in contributing a book rec one month, please email christchurch@mathsjam.com to sign up.