1. When a system of sets covers a space, the star number of the covering is the supremum over the sets of the system of the cardinals of the numbers of sets of the system meeting a set of the system . The standard Lebesgue 'brick-laying' construction provides an example, for each positive integer n, of a lattice covering of R" by closed rectangular parallelepipeds with star number 2"T'-1 . In v...