The recent discovery of the aperiodic monotiles known as the hat and the spectre has sparked a surge of interest by the general public in exactly what it means to tile the Euclidean plane in an aperiodic fashion. Explaining a mathematical breakthrough to those without background knowledge can be difficult. However, in this case, communicating the ideas has been facilitated by the highly visual nature of what has been found, much to the delight of the editors of national newspapers and magazines, and also those who love to blog on social media. News of the first tile, the hat, broke in March 2023, with a second tile, the spectre, announced two months later. A festival, hatfest, took place a couple of months after that; the two day event featured lectures for established and aspiring mathematicians, a display of associated art, and an open-to-the-public evening lecture, all at the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford. Figure 1 shows the two tiles at the centre of the festivities. To tile the plane aperiodically the hat requires the use of its mirror tile but the spectre, with a minor modification to its edges, is the first true monotile; so adjusted, it, like the hat, can tile the plane aperiodically and not periodically, but without the need for its congruent mirror.