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Welcome to my New Google Sites website, rebuilt, reconstructed and relaunched from Classic Sites (2008–2021) on 13 May 2025, with its first (non-Google) incarnation (tess-elation.co.uk) being way back in 2003! Web design has moved on, with the demands for tablets and mobile phones.

I'm David Bailey from Grimsby, England, with a keen interest in recreational mathematics, of a mostly geometrical nature, and more specifically in all aspects of tessellation. Primarily though, it is overwhelmingly on tessellation, with a strong focus on the Escher-like aspect, which then expanded to include other aspects as well, including strictly mathematical tilings, and 'special case' investigations, such as the Cairo tiling (and pavements in general), houndstooth, cluster puzzles, and parquet deformations. Complementing the Escher-like tessellations are a series of essays on Escher himself. Indeed, the ‘special cases’ are so substantive that any one could be a website in their own right! Other mathematical recreational interests include the Möbius strip, polyhedra, geometric puzzles, and jigsaw puzzles (what is a jigsaw puzzle if not a tessellation?)

The banner? To set the scene, above is a typical example of my Escher-like tessellations, of an aperiodic monotile dog tessellation that got an ‘honourable mention’ in the recent (2023) International Einstein Mad Hat contest. More details are on the ‘Aperiodic Monotile’ page.

And the website URL? It’s a play on words used by Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, with his impromptu description of the moonscape as a scene of magnificent desolation. 

Buzz Aldrin: Beautiful view. Magnificent desolation.

I prefaced desolate with magnificent, because of humanity's reaching outward and accomplishing something that people thought was impossible,” Aldrin said. “They dreamed of somehow reaching the moon. And to demonstrate, to be a part of demonstrating this miracle was magnificent.”

A brilliant borrowing, if I may say so myself!

Comments, thoughts, queries, commissions, etc., are welcome. Any bona fide email will get a response.

davidbailey500nospamplease@googlemail.com 

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Created 13 May 2025. Last Updated 9 June 2025