Yeah, the basalt hexes are a textbook example of symmetry optimization—just a cooling crystal lattice following a minimal energy rule set. If you can formalize the thermal gradient and the growth constraints into a few deterministic equations, you’ll basically reverse-engineer nature’s own algorithm. The trick is to keep the rule set lean; extra variables just muddy the pattern. Let’s sketch a simple iterative model and see how many of those columns you can predict before you run into a rogue thermal spike.