All my life I've been something of a boardgame nut...probably always will be.  Recently, I discovered a new boardgame that I very much enjoy and like to show to people.  It's called Carcassonne.  This game is a tile-based game in which players take turns strategically placing tiles on the table, ultimately creating a large map of cities, roads, and farmlands.  The game is fantastically addictive.  The game, not including its various expansions contains 72 tiles.  I had some spare cycles today and wondered if I could place all 72 tiles together to form a square board, and have all tiles legally placed.

As it turns out, this was easier that I thought it might be, only taking about 10-15 minutes.  One primary goal was to set the board up such that it was completely contained; that is, set up such that no cities and roads led off of the board.  Well, the result wasn't quite what I was aiming for, but I'll probably give it another try in the coming days (hrs).  Please forgive the blurriness of some of the tiles - I took the photograph at an angle so as to minimize the flash's glare and then photoshopped it with a perspective distortion and a stretch.

Update January 31st, 2005:
Here's an updated one that took a little more time.  As you can see, all of the roads and cities are completely self-contained on the board with the exception of the lower left corner.  Oh, well, it was fun while it lasted.