Sliding Tiles Puzzle
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Sliding Tiles Puzzle - Rules


The Sliding Tiles Puzzle consists of a game board with 16 positions in total. One position is kept free while the other 15 positions are covered by numbered tiles labeled from #1 to #15. Tiles horizontally or vertically adjacent towards the spare position can be shoved onto the free location.

Objective is to place the tiles matching a selected challenge as described in the Challenges page accessible via the menu.

The player can freely choose among the described challenges. Intentionally this free play mode does not check if the selected task is solved.

History

The 15 tiles version of the Sliding Tiles Puzzle is often credited to Noyes Palmer Chapman and Sam Loyd.

It is reported that Noyes Palmer Chapman, a postmaster in Canastota, New York, USA, might have created the puzzle approximately in 1874 originally. Noyes Chapman's puzzle actually consists of 16 tiles and the task must have been to build row sums and column sums with tiles labeled from #1 to #16 being equal 34. Which makes up a magic square as described even hundreds of years ago, e.g in Albrecht Dürer's Melencolia § I, dated 1514. Thus the exact mathematical description with objective to build such magic squares is definitively older. That is basically why you might find descriptions mentioning Noyes Chapman's version being a precursor puzzle for the Sliding Tiles Puzzle only. According to Wikipedia Noyes Chapman claimed intellectual property but patent request got rejected since a similar patent has already been granted.

Anyway Sam Loyd, a puzzle author and mathematician, is sometimes credited to be the creator, too. For sure he played a major role in making the puzzle famous in 19th century. Sam Loyd came up with an unsolvable variant with just two neighbouring tiles exchanged. This is referred to be the 14 and 15 tiles exchanged version of the puzzle (14-15 Puzzle).

The Name of the Game

A patent nowadays shall protect a specific technical solution. The rules itself cannot be covered by such a patent in modern law. The rules text might only be covered by copyrights regulating the authorship of the exact rules text. Such that possibly the only type of infringement could be in misusing any registered trademark. Which is unlikely for any traditional name of the puzzle.

Typical names depending on language and region are

  • Fifteen Puzzle, Sliding Puzzle, Sliding Tiles Puzzle (us, uk, en),
  • Schiebepuzzle (de),
  • Jeu de Taquin (fr),
  • Juego del quince (es, mind the card game Escoba that may be called Juego del quince, too),
  • Gioco del quindici (it),
  • Patnáctka (cz),
  • 15-spillet (dk),
  • Schuifpuzzel (nl),
  • Femtonpussel (sv)
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Sliding Tiles Puzzle - Challenges


You can freely chose among the listed challenges here! A challenge marked having a spoiler indicates that this is directly showing a final position although a similar challenge exists describing the intended achievement in a more abstract form. The abstract versions are obviously harder to solve. Feel free to find more patterns than the ones listed in here!

Left to right rows

Left to right rows.

This is the classical tile arrangement or standard challenge to go for.


Inwards spiral or worm 1

Spiral directed inwards.

Starting with the first tile in the upper left corner the consecutive tiles follow in clockwise direction. The loop is getting smaller and the last position remains empty on an inner field.


Outwards spiral or worm 1

Spiral directed outwards.

Starting on the inner tile positions the tiles follow in clockwise direction. The spiral gets bigger this way. The empty position shall be located in the lower left corner here.


Magic square

No visual hint! Build a magic square! Find a configuration with equal sums of tile values in

  • each of the 4 rows,
  • each of the 4 columns, and
  • both diagonals.

The empty field represents zero! What is the sum in each row, column, and diagonal? Could you explain why?

Magic square (spoiler!)

A magic square with empty position representing value zero.

This is a magic square configuration with equal sums of tile values in

  • each of the 4 rows,
  • each of the 4 columns, and
  • both diagonals.

The empty field represents zero.


San Francisco, Lombard Street

Direction changes on each row here.

It is a long winding road.


Meander 1

Narrow winding curves.

The narrow winding curves formation looks like a meandering river.


Knight's move

Begin on upper left corner and consecutively place the next number in exact distance of a Knight's move like in a Chess game.


Knight's move (spoiler!)

Tiles' distance is similar to a Knight's move like in a Chess game.

Begin on upper left corner and consecutively place the next number in exact distance of a Knight's move like in a Chess game.


Inwards spiral or worm 2

Another spiral directed inwards.

The formation shows a spiral being directed inwards. The empty position is in upper left corner with tile labelled #1 following on the right hand side.


Top to bottom columns

Top to bottom columns.

The pattern follows vertical columns instead of horizontal rows.


Odd then even 1

Odds on top and evens on bottom half.

Odd numbers are placed in the upper half. Even numbers are located in lower section. In each part the numbers are ordered by their values in rows.


Zig zag 1

Tiles follow a zig zag pattern.

The zig zag pattern reminds on saw teeth.


JPG zig zag

Diagonally shaped worm or zig zag pattern.

The empty position is in upper left corner. The numbered tiles follow a diagonally shaped pattern. Each diagonal is changing direction. Thus tile #15 is in the opposite corner of the empty position.


Odd then even 2

Odds on left and evens on right half.

Odd numbers are placed in the left half. Even numbers are located in right section. In each part the numbers are ordered by their values in columns.


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About Sliding Tiles Puzzle


Legal

Oliver Merkel, myself in front of an Austrian Sliding Tiles Puzzle, Ötztal, Tyrol, cc-by-nc-nd 4.0.

Copyright (c) 2016
@author Oliver Merkel, Merkel(dot) Oliver(at) web(dot) de.
All rights reserved.
Logos, brands, and trademarks belong to their respective owners.

All source code also including code parts written in HMTL, Javascript, CSS is under MIT License.

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Oliver Merkel, Merkel(dot) Oliver(at) web(dot)de

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

If not otherwise stated all game graphics (independent of its format) are licensed under
Creative Commons License
Images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Sliding Tiles Puzzle Principles and Concepts

The basic ruleset of Sliding Tiles Puzzle is in the public domain due to its age. Please mind that certain variants are covered by legal rights concerning trademarks, game designs and possibly authorship on an exact ruleset for commerical versions.

Third Party Code Licenses

This Sliding Tiles Puzzle implementation uses unmodified independent code libraries provided by third parties. Since their licenses might vary the corresponding information is externally linked below. Thus these external links will enable you to reproduce any copyright notice, any related list of conditions, disclaimers, and especially the copyright holders and authors of the corresponding third party functionality.

jQuery: MIT jQuery Mobile: MIT
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