![15-puzzle-02](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/15-puzzle-02.jpg)
A sliding puzzle, sliding block puzzle, or sliding tile puzzle is a
combination puzzle
A combination puzzle, also known as a sequential move puzzle, is a puzzle which consists of a set of pieces which can be manipulated into different combinations by a group of operations. Many such puzzles are mechanical puzzles of polyhedral s ...
that challenges a player to slide (frequently flat) pieces along certain routes (usually on a board) to establish a certain end-configuration. The pieces to be moved may consist of simple shapes, or they may be imprinted with colours, patterns, sections of a larger picture (like a jigsaw puzzle), numbers, or letters.
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. In manufactured wood and plastic products, the linking and encaging is often achieved in combination, through
mortise-and-tenon
A mortise and tenon (occasionally mortice and tenon) joint connects two pieces of wood or other material. Woodworkers around the world have used it for thousands of years to join pieces of wood, mainly when the adjoining pieces connect at right ...
key channels along the edges of the pieces. In at least one vintage case of the popular
Chinese cognate game Huarong Road, a wire screen prevents lifting of the pieces, which remain loose. As the illustration shows, some sliding puzzles are
mechanical puzzles
A mechanical puzzle is a puzzle presented as a set of mechanically interlinked pieces in which the solution is to manipulate the whole object or parts of it. While puzzles of this type have been in use by humanity as early as the 3rd century BC ...
. However, the mechanical fixtures are usually not essential to these puzzles; the parts could as well be tokens on a flat board that are moved according to certain rules.
Unlike
tour puzzle
A tour puzzle is a puzzle in which the player travels around a board (usually but not necessarily two-dimensional) using a token which represents a character. Maze puzzles are often of this type.
Sometimes the player has more than one token with ...
s, 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.
The oldest type of sliding puzzle is the
fifteen puzzle
The 15 puzzle (also called Gem Puzzle, Boss Puzzle, Game of Fifteen, Mystic Square and many others) is a sliding puzzle having 15 square tiles numbered 1–15 in a frame that is 4 tiles high and 4 tiles wide, leaving one unoccupied tile position ...
, invented by Noyes Chapman in 1880;
Sam Loyd
Samuel Loyd (January 30, 1841 – April 10, 1911), was an American chess player, chess composer, puzzle author, and recreational mathematician. Loyd was born in Philadelphia but raised in New York City.
As a chess composer, he authored a numb ...
is often wrongly credited with making sliding puzzles popular based on his false claim that he invented the fifteen puzzle. Chapman's invention initiated a puzzle craze in the early 1880s.
From the 1950s through the 1980s sliding puzzles employing letters to form words were very popular. These sorts of puzzles have several possible solutions, as may be seen from examples such as
Ro-Let (a letter-based fifteen puzzle),
Scribe-o (4x8), and
Lingo.
The fifteen puzzle has been computerized (as
puzzle video game
Puzzle video games make up a broad genre of video games that emphasize puzzle solving. The types of puzzles can test problem-solving skills, including logic, pattern recognition, sequence solving, spatial recognition, and word completion.
H ...
s) and examples are available to play for free on-line from many Web pages. It is a descendant of the
jigsaw puzzle
A jigsaw puzzle is a tiling puzzle that requires the assembly of often irregularly shaped interlocking and mosaiced pieces, each of which typically has a portion of a picture. When assembled, the puzzle pieces produce a complete picture.
In t ...
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.
Group theory
As a famous example of the sliding puzzle, it can be proved that the
15 puzzle
The 15 puzzle (also called Gem Puzzle, Boss Puzzle, Game of Fifteen, Mystic Square and many others) is a sliding puzzle having 15 square tiles numbered 1–15 in a frame that is 4 tiles high and 4 tiles wide, leaving one unoccupied tile position ...
can be represented by the
alternating group
In mathematics, an alternating group is the group of even permutations of a finite set. The alternating group on a set of elements is called the alternating group of degree , or the alternating group on letters and denoted by or
Basic pr ...
, because the combinations of the 15 puzzle can be generated by
3-cycles. In fact, any
sliding puzzle with square tiles of equal size can be represented by
.
Gallery
File:15-puzzle.svg, A solved 15-puzzle
File:15-puzzle-Rate-Your-Mind-Pal.svg, A solved 15-puzzle with letters forming a sentence
File:15-puzzle_image.svg, A solved 15-puzzle with an image
File:Combination Puzzle 7x7 sliding piece.jpg, A 7x7 sliding block puzzle. The task for this puzzle is to arrange it so that no tile design is repeated in any row column or diagonal. There is more than one solution to this puzzle.
File:batgirl.gif, A 3x3 sliding puzzle featuring a comic book character
File:Hakoiri3.jpg, An example of the Klotski
Klotski (from pl, klocki, lit=wooden blocks) is a sliding block puzzle thought to have originated in the early 20th century. The name may refer to a specific layout of ten blocks, or in a more global sense to refer to a whole group of similar s ...
puzzle
File:15-Puzzle.jpg, An unsolvable puzzle due to the pieces not being in an even permutation
Examples of sliding puzzles
*
Fifteen puzzle
The 15 puzzle (also called Gem Puzzle, Boss Puzzle, Game of Fifteen, Mystic Square and many others) is a sliding puzzle having 15 square tiles numbered 1–15 in a frame that is 4 tiles high and 4 tiles wide, leaving one unoccupied tile position ...
*
Klotski
Klotski (from pl, klocki, lit=wooden blocks) is a sliding block puzzle thought to have originated in the early 20th century. The name may refer to a specific layout of ten blocks, or in a more global sense to refer to a whole group of similar s ...
*
Minus Cube
The Minus Cube (aka BLOXBOX by Piet Hein; aka Varikon Box) is a 3D mechanical variant of the ''n''-puzzle, which was manufactured in the Soviet Union. It consists of a bonded transparent plastic box containing seven small cubes, each glued t ...
*
Rush Hour
*
Sokoban
is a puzzle video game in which the player pushes boxes around in a warehouse, trying to get them to storage locations. The game was designed in 1981 by Hiroyuki Imabayashi, and first published in December 1982.
Gameplay
The game is played on a ...
See also
*
Ro (video game)
''Ro'' is a puzzle game first developed for the Qualcomm Brew development platform in 2006 and for the iPhone platform in 2008.
History
Ro was initially created as part of a larger unpublished Full motion video, FMV game titled, "Red Sky", whi ...
– A rotational variation
*
Rubik's Cube
References
* ''Sliding Piece Puzzles'' (by
Edward Hordern, 1986,
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, {{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
Academic Press (AP) is an academic book publisher founded in 1941. It was acquired by Harcourt, Brace & World in 1969. Reed Elsevier bought Harcourt in 2000, and Academic Press is now an imprint of Elsevier.
Academic Press publishes referen ...
)
* ''The 15 Puzzle'' (by
Jerry Slocum &
Dic Sonneveld, 2006,
Slocum Puzzle Foundation Slocum may refer to:
People
* Bill Slocum, American politician
* Craig Slocum, American actor
* Frances Slocum, an adopted member of the Miami tribe
* Frederick Slocum, American astronomer
* Heath Slocum, American golfer
* Henry Slocum (tennis ...
)
US Patent 4872682- sliding puzzle wrapped on Rubik's Cube
Mechanical puzzles
Combination puzzles