Puzzle: Underwater World

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Puzzle: Underwater World is a classical puzzle game invented in 1878, it’s still popular today. The sliding puzzle that consists of a frame of numbered square tiles in random order with one tile missing. The object of the puzzle is to place the tiles in order by making sliding moves that use the empty space. The game 15 puzzle is made in three different sizes: 3 х 3 (8 tiles) – for beginners and kids 4 х 4 (15 tiles) – classical size fifteen puzzle for all ages 5 х 5 (24 tiles) – for those who like to think Features: Three levels of complicity (8, 15, and 24 tiles); Algorithm that excludes unsolvable combinations; Realistic animation and tiles sliding Moves counter and timer Friendly interface with color theme Online records services Optimized for PC Info A sliding puzzle, sliding block puzzle, or sliding tile puzzle is a combination puzzle 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 colors, 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. 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 that are moved according to certain rules. 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. The oldest type of sliding puzzle is the fifteen puzzle, invented by Noyes Chapman in 1880, Sam Loyd 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.[1] The fifteen puzzle has been computerized (as puzzle video games) and examples are 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. Rules Before you read any further, you should be aware of reports that sliding puzzles can cause insanity. There's no doubt they're addictive and they've certainly made some puzzle solvers tear out their hair and swear a blue streak. When the first sliding puzzle was invented it set off a worldwide craze. That same simple puzzle is still challenging puzzle solvers more than a century later. Sliding puzzles are cousins of mechanical puzzles, like those that require you to disentangle two twisted nails or to fit a collection of blocks into a cube. They're also related to jigsaw puzzles and to mazes. Rubik's Cube is a 3-D variation on a sliding puzzle. Most sliding puzzles are two-dimensional. The pieces cannot be lifted out of the frame or rearranged in any way, except by sliding them into an empty space. They are also called sliding-block puzzles or simply sliders. The goal of a sliding puzzle is to arrange the pieces in a particular pattern. That might mean putting together the elements of a picture, forming a shape, or creating an array of numbers or letters. Movement of the pieces is restricted so that you have to move one piece in order to shift another. That's where the madness comes in. What makes sliding puzzles so alluring? The best of them are deceptively simple in appearance. They might involve rearranging only a half-dozen pieces. A child can understand the idea, and it might look like child's play to solve the puzzle. You don't have to learn any complicated rules. Yet the solution can be so complex that it seems impossible. Some solutions involve 100 moves or more. The puzzles demand logic, problem-solving and sequential thinking skills, combined with a dash of intuition and a healthy amount of patience. Sliding puzzles started as actual mechanical devices, blocks of wood or plastic in a frame. But they were easy to translate into computer programs and to offer over the Internet. Hundreds of sliding puzzles are available online, and now you can play sliding puzzles on your smartphones and mobile devices. In the next section, you'll read about the wacky history of these diabolical gadgets. The History of Sliding Puzzles Sliding puzzles started with a bang in 1880. In a matter of months after its introduction, people all over the world were engrossed in trying to solve what came to be known as the 15 Puzzle. It consisted of a 4-by-4 grid, with 15 numbered squares and one space left empty. The idea was to scramble the numbers, then rearrange them into numerical order by sliding them successively into the empty space. This first sliding puzzle was invented by an upstate New York postmaster named Noyes Chapman, who came up with the idea during the 1870s. Boston woodworker Matthias J. Rice offered a commercial version in 1879 [source: Slocum and Sonneveld]. He called it the Gem Puzzle; other versions were sold as the Boss Puzzle, the Game of Fifteen and the Mystic Square. The fad took off in the early months of 1880, a puzzle rage that would not be repeated until Rubik's Cube became wildly popular in the 1980s. Factories could not keep up with the demand for the 15 Puzzle. So many people were caught up in the fad that employers w…