Terrazzo hints for Tuesday, September 22, 2026

Today's subject comes from cosmos.

The caption reads: “To measure the solar system, the world had to cooperate.”

You place 7 stones into a frame of 36 cells. Every cell is filled exactly once.

• Solitude. No two sun cells may touch, not even corner to corner.

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

The Transit of Venus

Venus crosses the face of the sun twice in eight years, then not again for over a century. Edmond Halley realised that if observers scattered across the globe timed the crossing precisely, the small differences between their measurements would give the distance from the earth to the sun — the ruler for everything else. He knew he would be dead before the next pair. In 1761 and 1769 hundreds of astronomers sailed to Siberia, Tahiti, Hudson Bay and the Cape, several dying en route, some clouded out after years of travel. Their pooled numbers put the sun within a few percent of the modern value.