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Life & fun · July 11, 2018

Solving Rush Hour, the 6x6 Sliding Block Puzzle

Solving Rush Hour, the 6x6 Sliding Block Puzzle launched on July 11, 2018 with 223 votes, #86 of 2,673 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 8 years on.

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In plain words

Rush Hour is a 6x6 sliding block puzzle game originally invented in the 1970s. This project documents a comprehensive database of all interesting Rush Hour puzzle configurations and includes a solver and puzzle generator for creating new starting positions. The work demonstrates algorithmic approaches to analyzing and generating challenges for this classic mechanical puzzle game.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

How I created a database of all interesting Rush Hour configurations. Rush Hour is a 6x6 sliding block puzzle invented by Nob Yoshigahara in the 1970s. It was first sold in the United States in 1996. I played a clone of this game on my first iPhone several years ago. Recently, I stumbled on the physical incarnation of it and instantly bought it on Amazon for my kids to play. We've been having fun with it, but naturally I was most interested in writing some code to solve the puzzles. After writing a solver, I wrote a puzzle generator that would create more starting positions for us to try (the game comes with 40 levels printed on playing cards). The generator used simulated annealing to try…from michaelfogleman.com

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