English

Noun

holyhedron ‎(plural holyhedra)

1. A polyhedron with a finite number of faces and with a polygonal hole in every face, the holes' boundaries sharing no point with each other or the face's boundary.
   • From Mathematical Ideas, 11th ed. by Charles Miller, Vern Heeren, John Hornsby, Margaret Morrow, and Jill Van Newenhizen

     John Conway of Princeton University offered a reward in the 1990s to anyone producing a holyhedron, a polyhedron with a finite number of faces and with a hole in every face. At the time, no one knew whether such an object could exist. When graduate student Jade Vinson arrived at Princeton, he immediately took up the challenge and in 2000 produced (at least the proof of the theoretical existence of) a holyhedron with 78,585,627 faces. The reward offered ($10,000 divided by the number of faces) earned Vinson $0.0001. Subsequently, Don Hatch produced one with 492 faces, good for a prize of $20.33. Conway had predicted that someone will eventually find a holyhedron with fewer than 100 faces.

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