The 14-15 Puzzle

The aim of the game is to move the tiles so that they are in order from 1 to 15 with the blank at the lower right.

Clicking on a tile will move it, provided it is adjacent to the blank.

The puzzle was made famous by Sam Loyd in 1870 and has an interesting history.

At any time you may press the Reset button to display a new permutation of the tiles with the blank at the lower right. To see the parity of the current permutation, click the Parity button.

To be able to see the puzzle and move the tiles, your browser must support a recent version of JavaScript or JScript - e.g., Netscape 3, Internet Explorer 4, or later.
Resizing the screen may cause the puzzle to revert to its initial state. You can return to the current permutation by clicking the Repaint button.

Additional challenges:

Sometimes you'll succeed, sometimes you won't. Can you tell, just from the initial pattern, whether or not you will succeed?
Can you consistently solve the puzzle in less than 100 moves?

Thanks to Niraj Kumar for the tiles.
Don Taylor

Last major change: 19 April, 2000