| by Serhiy Grabarchuk, Jr. |
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Web has been invented for puzzles
and Sliding Block Puzzles (SBP) were and still are among the first
ones to be presented online. Which Web resources are the most
prominent and worth to visit in order to play some great SBP's? The
list below is not the final and only represents some of our selected
picks.
The current online "modern classic" resource on interactive SBP's is
no doubt Nick Baxter's
The Sliding Block Puzzle Page.
The Page was one of the pioneers in collecting and presenting
interactive Java SBP's on the Web in the second half of 1990s.
The
Page consists of several sections, some of which highlight puzzles
and some of which highlight prominent puzzle designers and their
contribution into the "Sliding" world. |
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Image from
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Nob Yoshigahara
His section of
The Page is called
NOBlocks. As a leading and
very influential world puzzle designer, patron and collector of
the second half of the 20th century, Nob Yoshigahara made his
great contribution into the SBP’s development. Some of our picks
from his section are:
No-Off [44],
Adam & Eve [56] and
Ultimate T-zer [91]. |
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Polyomino Themes icnludes several more puzzle designs from
Rodolfo Kurchan, Harold Cataquet and Michael McKee. |
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Recently added
section on
The 15 Puzzle can please any puzzle lover,
simultaneously reminding to us this is exactly the puzzle that
comes to mind even today to imagine what the SBP’s are. The
section itself is based on the recently published Jerry Slocum's
new puzzle research book, The 15 Puzzle. |
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The site also
includes a special section dedicated to what can be treated the
most successful bestseller among contemporary sliding block
puzzles -
Rush Hour® (manufactured by
ThinkFun, Inc. - formerly
Binary Arts). |
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In addition to that a special
section of
The Page is devoted to
Classic Designs among which our
picks would be the well-known
Get My Goat
[28] by J. I. Wiley,
Ma's
Puzzle [23] by C. L. Diamond and
Pennant Puzzle (aka Dad's Puzzler, et
al.) [59] by L. W. Hardy.
And a special section is devoted to
Modern Designs among which our
picks are
Broken Heart [34] by Junichi Yananose,
Junk's Hanoi [161] by
Junk Kato and
Mini Ma's Puzzle [28] by Dick Hess. |
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| Some other leading puzzle sites on
the Web have also collections of interactive SBP’s as their parts.
Puzzles.COM has several of them in their Puzzle Club's
Collection:
Holiday Garland (Flash),
Holiday Switcheroo (Flash),
Happy 2001
[20] (JavaScript)
and
The Fish
[38] (JavaScript). |
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Images from
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The site includes a special section on
Rush Hour® where, along with other materials on the puzzle,
many links to its online versions (Flash, Java, JavaScript,
etc.) on the Web are collected. |
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PuzzleBeast by James W. Stephens
includes several very interesting SBP concepts, all of which are
interactive (Java). They are: Oskar van Deventer's
The Bulbous Blob Puzzles and
ConSlide Puzzles; and James'
A Dozen Irritating Sliding
Block Puzzles and
Sliding Block Puzzles. |
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Captured from
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Dries De Clercq runs a special
website
dedicated to SBP’s. Though the puzzles on the site are the
series-based concepts you can find some interesting ideas in
them. Our picks would be:
4x4 - Puzzle 6 [42],
Minimaze 2 [53] and
Tornado [939] (if you are really patient). All puzzles are based on the Java
applet by Pierre-François Culand. |
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| The interactive SBP’s presented in
this Review are by no means the only ones on the Web. There are
still a lot of them on other websites. This Review presents only our
recommended picks and solving even them can take you a whole day or
even more. But if you know about other great interactive SBP’s,
please write to us. |
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