Terrazzo hints for Friday, September 18, 2026

Today's subject comes from nature.

The caption reads: “No butterfly makes the round trip. The species does.”

You place 10 stones into a frame of 48 cells. Every cell is filled exactly once.

• Kinship. Same-coloured stones that touch make a region. Today: gold forms 5 separate regions of 5, 4, 1, 1, 1; lapis blue forms 2 separate regions of 14, 5; moss green forms 2 separate regions of 4, 1; terracotta forms 4 separate regions of 5, 5, 1, 1.
• The Vein. The vein cells must form one unbroken path between the frame's two notches, with no branches and no loops.

Start with the largest region the Laws name: it has the fewest ways to fit.

Four Generations North

Monarchs that leave Mexico in spring fly north and lay eggs. Their children continue north, and their grandchildren after them — each of those summer generations living only a few weeks. The fourth generation is different: it emerges in late summer physiologically altered, does not breed, lives eight months instead of five weeks, and flies as far as four thousand kilometres to a handful of fir groves in Michoacán it has never seen. It navigates by a sun compass corrected for time of day by an antennal clock. Then, in spring, it starts north again — and the countdown of generations resets.