Sliding puzzle

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A solved 15-puzzle

A sliding puzzle, sliding block puzzle, or sliding tile puzzle challenges a player to slide usually flat pieces along certain routes (usually on a board) to establish a certain end-configuration.

Unlike other tour puzzles, a sliding block puzzle prohibits lifting any piece off the board. This property separates sliding puzzles from rearrangement puzzles. Hence finding moves, and the paths opened up by each move, within the two-dimensional confines of the board, are important parts of solving sliding block puzzles.

Sliding puzzles are essentially two-dimensional in nature, even if the sliding is facilitated by mechanically interlinked pieces (like partially encaged marbles) or three-dimensional tokens. As this example shows, some sliding puzzles are mechanical puzzles. However, the mechanical fixtures are usually not essential to these puzzles; the parts could as well be tokens on a flat board which are moved according to certain rules.

This type of puzzle has been computerized, and is available to play for free on-line from many web pages. It is a descendant of the jigsaw puzzle in that its point is to form a picture on-screen. The last square of the puzzle is then displayed automatically once the other pieces have been lined up.

Similarly, this sort of puzzle is included within many video games,^[1] just as mazes are, and like them is considered by many fans of such games as a time-filler.

Sam Loyd is often wrongly credited with making sliding puzzles popular based on his false claim that he invented the fifteen puzzle. The 15 Puzzle, invented by Noyes Chapman, created a puzzle craze in 1880.

1 Notes
2 References
3 Examples of sliding puzzles
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Notes

^ Variations of the sliding puzzle can be found in a number of console-based Role Playing Games (RPGs). The player is presented with a series of objects that must be pushed in such a way as to clear a path to the exit. Frequently these objects continue to move until coming into contact with another object. In some cases, the objects are destroyed upon contact. For some games, one or more objects must end up at specific locations to open the exit. One recent game with such puzzles is Xenosaga III, but these puzzles appear in many of the games from Squaresoft, as well as other RPGs such as Dragon Warrior, Breath of Fire, etc.

[edit] References

Sliding Piece Puzzles (by Edward Hordern, 1986, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-853204-0) is said to be the definitive volume on this type of puzzle.
Winning Ways (by Elwyn Ralph Berlekamp et al., 1982, Academic Press)
The 15 Puzzle (by Jerry Slocum & Dic Sonneveld, 2006, Slocum Puzzle Foundation)