Tilings of Benzels via the Abacus Bijection

Abstract

Propp recently introduced regions in the hexagonal grid called benzels and stated several enumerative conjectures about the tilings of benzels using two types of prototiles called stones and bones. We resolve two of his conjectures and prove some additional results that he left tacit. In order to solve these problems, we first transfer benzels into the square grid. One of our primary tools, which we combine with several new ideas, is a bijection (rediscovered by Stanton and White and often attributed to them although it is considerably older) between $k$-ribbon tableaux of certain skew shapes and certain $k$-tuples of Young tableaux.