#2331: Portiles

Imagine if you could make, say, the hull of a spacecraft or an architectural design or a rocket motor with ports or doors which could be easily repositioned in its surface.

Today’s invention is to adapt the children’s 15-tile puzzle to allow this.

tilecraft

A cylindrical skin would be made using curved tiles.

These would be free to slide axially or circumferentially, one at a time.

This would cause the open port(s) to change position.

When its new location had been arrived at, a window, an exhaust nozzle, an open frame or a hinged hatch could be inserted in a given aperture to ensure that the pattern was maintained until the next reconfiguration was needed.

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