Crack propagation in brittle materials with anisotropic surface energy is important in applications involving
single crystals, extruded polymers, or geological and organic materials. Furthermore, when this anisotropy
is strong, the phenomenology of crack propagation becomes very rich, with forbidden crack propagation
directions or complex sawtooth crack patterns. This problem interrogates fundamental issues in fracture
mechanics, including the principles behind the selection of crack direction. Here, we propose a variational
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