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Essays arrive in groups rather than one at a time. The most recent group is below in full, and every earlier one after it, newest first.

Essays arrive in groups rather than one at a time, and a group usually opens up a subject not covered before. Between one group and the next nothing changes, so a reader who has seen the most recent group has seen everything.

23 September 2026

8 essays on axioms and construction, designing a base, who found it, and when, rigid folding, folding nobody designed and what it costs to know

creases to mark each fraction of an edgeportable: every rectanglesquare onlyA-series sheet only0123456creases11112112313124131234515/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11/12the portable column is one number for every rectangle; each sheet's column is true of that sheet alone Axioms and construction

What the square saves

A construction made only of crossings, midpoints and folds along the edges lands at the same fraction of every rectangle, so its cost is one number for all of them. Counted crease by crease against every fold the first four axioms allow, that portability costs about a crease and three quarters a fraction up to twelfths — and the square is not the cheapest sheet to give it up for. An A-series sheet, where Haga's fold goes silently wrong, marks two sevenths in two creases; the square needs three, and any sheet at all needs five.

7 figures
the bar is the footprint, split by how deep the other side liesone layer downtwo layers downnot under this point at allThe preliminary base8 panels · 1 stateThe square twist9 panels · 1 stateThe hexagon twist13 panels · 1 stateFold and cut — the triangle7 panels · 2 statesa 2 × 2 Miura patch4 panels · 1 statea 3 × 2 Miura patch6 panels · 3 statesa 3 × 3 Miura patch9 panels · 6 statesa 4 × 3 Miura patch12 panels · 11 statesthe letter fold3 panels · 2 statescounted over every folded state and from both faces, so nothing here is one lucky pile Designing a base

One sheet down

A colour change has been priced by how deep the pile is — eight layers over every point of the preliminary base, six on a small Miura. Ordered, the piles say something else: wherever the other side of the paper lies under a point, it is the next sheet down on every pattern with one folded state, and never more than two down on any. And relettering the same creases cannot reach it. Of 112 letterings of the preliminary base that fold, every one shows either the printed face or the whole face turned the other colour; the square twist's eight only turn its face round.

7 figures
11.051.11.151.20.850.90.9511.05the sheet's length, with its width oneshare, over the share on a square6 sides · +7.7%10 sides · +2.6%14 sides · +1.3%22 sides · +0.5%each curve is one polygon's share over its share on the square; the dot is its own sheet Axioms and construction

Turning is uphill all the way

A regular polygon of 4k + 2 sides on a sheet a little longer than a square cannot lie flat: it turns, pressed against all four edges, until the sheet is exactly its own. Its share on the way has a closed form, and the closed form's slope is proportional to h² − 1 for every such polygon — flat on the square, rising all the way to the own sheet, and falling after it. So the own sheet is exactly the peak, the gain from the square to it is the average of one and the sheet's length, and the rank the census measured for polygons of this kind, (n − 2)⁄4, is now a theorem.

6 figures
234567024681012columns (rows, for the two-column patches)folded statestwo rows high: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11three rows high: 6, 11two columns wide: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1a strip two rows high has 2c − 3 states; every patch's states are one choice with that many answers Who found it, and when

One choice with eleven answers

A folded state was proposed as a short list of free choices — which way a flap lies, where a rim panel sits — with the layer-order field's signs following from them. Listed exhaustively on every Miura patch small enough, the choices are never independent: every sign that varies is tied to every other through a shared panel, so the states are one choice with many answers. And there are more answers than the record said. The overlap test had a blind spot a third of a panel wide, and with it corrected the three-by-three Miura has six folded states, not one, and the four-by-three eleven, not five.

6 figures
drawings carrying each fault, of those drawna junction is split in two: the fault, and the rim ending the reading also calls a junctionextended, of 120clipped, of 120a crossing760two creases pass through each othera stub150a crease stops in the middle of the papera crease ending on a crease00the junction as a faulta crease ending on the rim120120the junction as the reading counts ita fragment25a crease too short to seeevery stub is on a drawing with a crossing; every clipped fragment is on a drawing with nothing else wrong Rigid folding

Two faults, not four

A drawing departs from its crease list in four named ways — a crossing, a stub, a junction and a fragment — and a checker tests for all four. Counted side by side on two hundred and forty drawings, two of the tests find nothing the others do not. No crease anywhere ends on another crease: every junction the reading finds is a crease meeting the rim, which is where creases are meant to end. Every stub is on a drawing that already has a crossing. What is left is two independent faults, and the clipped construction, which makes no crossings, still makes the second — creases a thousandth of a millimetre long, in pairs.

6 figures
123456780.40.50.60.70.80.91how many lengths of finshare of the ceilingtips equally spacedheights halvingtwo thirdsradius 1, sheet thickness 0.01 · the share of the ceiling 2πR²/τ that fins of m lengths hold Folding nobody designed

The wedge belongs to one length

Radial fins inside a tube reach at best half of what any lining of sheet could hold, because converging fins leave empty wedges behind their tips. Tapering the fins cannot help: the tip already sets the count, and a fin cannot be thinner there than the sheet it is made of. Fins of several lengths can. Counted along the radius they are a staircase under a straight line, and the staircase with m steps is best with its steps equally spaced, where it holds exactly m ⁄ (m + 1) of the ceiling. The factor of two belonged to fins of one length, not to fins.

6 figures
the deepest point of each folded pattern, and its mean depthdeepest pointmean over the footprintThe Yoshimura patterndeepest ÷ mean = 1.00 · 100.0% at the deepestThe preliminary basedeepest ÷ mean = 1.00 · 99.8% at the deepestThe waterbomb tessellationdeepest ÷ mean = 1.02 · 98.1% at the deepestThe Miura folddeepest ÷ mean = 1.73 · 11.7% at the deepestThe tapered corrugationdeepest ÷ mean = 1.92 · 0.8% at the deepestThe hexagon twistdeepest ÷ mean = 2.15 · 24.4% at the deepestThe square twistdeepest ÷ mean = 2.98 · 17.4% at the deepestFold and cut — the triangledeepest ÷ mean = 5.89 · 2.9% at the deepestthe sheet is consumed by the mean and the fold is stopped by the deepest point Who found it, and when

The deepest point pays for the paper

A folded design uses its sheet according to its mean layer count and its paper according to its deepest point, and the ratio of the two is a property of the crease pattern. Measured on every printed pattern it runs from exactly one to nearly six — and it does not split tessellations from bases, as expected. It splits patterns whose every panel lies over every point from patterns that keep a footprint with structure in it. The ratio moves the corner of the substrate map by its square root, so the fold-and-cut triangle can reach the paper's eighty layers at 326 millimetres where the preliminary base must stop at 134.

6 figures
nodes per free letter, cheapest route against the middle onecheapest of eightmiddle of eight× where no route of that kind finished · periods along the bottom0.3110100×2345the square grid, glued×123the triangular grid, glued××1234the honeycomb, glued0.3110100×123the elongated triangular tiling, glued××12the rhombille tiling, glued×123the rhombille tiling, cut What it costs to know

The cheapest route crosses later

A search for a consistent lettering has a threshold: below it the letters propagate and the cost is a third of a node per crease, above it the search backtracks and the cost explodes. The threshold was measured with one branch order. Measured with eight, the cheapest route never starts searching before the typical one, and on most sheets it starts a period or two later — so part of every threshold on the record belongs to the route. And the one cut sheet past its threshold, the rhombille's, spreads across nearly three orders of magnitude of cost, which moves the spread off the gluing and onto the threshold.

6 figures

Before that

Everything published earlier, newest first. Titles only — the cards are on the full listing.

19 September 2026

12 essays on tessellations, curves and material, folding nobody designed, what it costs to know and rigid folding

16 September 2026

32 essays on folding nobody designed, what it costs to know, axioms and construction, designing a base, who found it, and when, curves and material, rigid folding and tessellations

15 September 2026

20 essays on folding nobody designed, axioms and construction, designing a base, who found it, and when, curves and material and rigid folding

13 September 2026

9 essays on who found it, and when, folding nobody designed, rigid folding, axioms and construction and curves and material

12 September 2026

15 essays on folding nobody designed, who found it, and when, curves and material, rigid folding, axioms and construction and designing a base

10 September 2026

20 essays on folding nobody designed, axioms and construction and who found it, and when

5 September 2026

50 essays on flat-folding, tessellations, what it costs to know, curves and material, designing a base, rigid folding, axioms and construction, who found it, and when and folding nobody designed

3 September 2026

20 essays on what it costs to know, flat-folding, tessellations, designing a base, curves and material, rigid folding, who found it, and when and folding nobody designed

1 September 2026

20 essays on flat-folding, what it costs to know, tessellations, curves and material, rigid folding, designing a base, folding nobody designed and who found it, and when

31 August 2026

20 essays on flat-folding, tessellations, what it costs to know, curves and material, axioms and construction, who found it, and when, rigid folding, designing a base and folding nobody designed

30 August 2026

20 essays on flat-folding, tessellations, what it costs to know, curves and material, rigid folding, designing a base, axioms and construction, who found it, and when and folding nobody designed

29 August 2026

20 essays on flat-folding, tessellations, rigid folding, designing a base, what it costs to know, curves and material, axioms and construction, who found it, and when and folding nobody designed

27 August 2026

15 essays on flat-folding, tessellations, curves and material, designing a base, what it costs to know, folding nobody designed, rigid folding, axioms and construction and who found it, and when

26 August 2026

15 essays on flat-folding, rigid folding, designing a base, what it costs to know, curves and material, tessellations, axioms and construction, who found it, and when and folding nobody designed

24 August 2026

15 essays on flat-folding, rigid folding, designing a base, tessellations, curves and material, what it costs to know, axioms and construction, who found it, and when and folding nobody designed

22 August 2026

15 essays on flat-folding, rigid folding, tessellations, designing a base, curves and material, axioms and construction, what it costs to know and who found it, and when

21 August 2026

15 essays on flat-folding, rigid folding, tessellations, designing a base, curves and material, axioms and construction and what it costs to know

20 August 2026

15 essays on flat-folding, curves and material, rigid folding, designing a base, tessellations, axioms and construction and what it costs to know

19 August 2026

15 essays on tessellations, curves and material, designing a base, what it costs to know, flat-folding, axioms and construction and rigid folding

17 August 2026

15 essays on flat-folding, curves and material, rigid folding, axioms and construction, designing a base and tessellations

16 August 2026

15 essays on flat-folding, designing a base, rigid folding, tessellations, axioms and construction and curves and material

14 August 2026

15 essays on folding nobody designed

13 August 2026

15 essays on who found it, and when

11 August 2026

15 essays on what it costs to know, axioms and construction, tessellations, designing a base and curves and material

10 August 2026

12 essays on flat-folding, what it costs to know, designing a base, axioms and construction, tessellations, rigid folding and curves and material

7 August 2026

15 essays on tessellations, rigid folding and curves and material

3 August 2026

19 essays on axioms and construction, flat-folding, designing a base and tessellations

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