8 puzzle
History
The eight puzzle is a smaller version of the fifteen puzzle, which was invented in 1874 by Noyes Palmer Chapman, a postmaster in Canastota, New York. The puzzle made its way to Hartford, Connecticut, where students in the American school of the Deaf started manufacturing the puzzle and, by December 1879, selling both locally and boston. Then the puzzle became a craze in the U.S. in Febuarary 1880.
The Board
The board is a 3x3 square that is home to eight square tiles. An online version of the 8 puzzle is playable below.
The Pieces
There are eight tiles on the board, shuffled randomly from the original position.
Rules
To move: If there is an empty adjacent square next to a tile, a tile may be slid into the empty location.
To win: The tiles must be moved back into their original positions, numbered 1 throught 8.
The eight puzzle is a sliding puzzle which consists of 3x3 grid of numbered squares with one square missing. The squares are jumbled when the puzzle start and the goal of this game is to unjumble the squares by only sliding a square into the empty space.
Strategies
- Computability: Finding a solution for n-puzzle is easy. However, finding a shortest solution is NP-hard.
Links
Gamescrafters
- Chayut Thanapirom