Sliding puzzle
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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, just as mazes are, and like them is considered by many fans of such games as a time-filler.
Sam Loyd is usually credited with making sliding puzzles popular with his invention of the mass-market fifteen puzzle in the 1870s.
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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)
Examples of sliding puzzles
See also
External links
- maa.org column on Sliding-block puzzles (http://www.maa.org/editorial/mathgames/mathgames_12_13_04.html) which rebuts the claims in the Economist.
- Hardest possible simple sliding block puzzle? (http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3445734) from The Economist
- http://www.speedcubing.com/ton/collection/Slide%20with%20Hole/
- US Patent 4872682 (http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=4872682) - sliding puzzle wrapped on Rubik's Cube
- Sliders (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Combinatorics/Sliders.shtml)
- Lucky 7 (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/pythagoras/lucky7.shtml)
- Happy 8 (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Games/happy8.shtml)
- Blithe 12 (http://www.cut-the-knot.org/Curriculum/Games/blithe12.shtml)