This is an applet based on a game put out by Binary Arts, a very cool game company. This game is a puzzle, the object of which is to get the red piece to the center spot in the 5 x 5 puzzle grid.

The rules are simple, but I have a hard time explaining them occasionally. All the pieces on the board have the ability to move, and they all move the same way. They can move horizontally or vertically, but not diagonally. They can only move when there is another piece in the same row or column they're in, and they may only move to the space(s) that immediately adjoin the piece(s) that share the column or row. The way the game describes this is, you can only move in a direction that will lead you to bump into another piece, and that bump will stop you next to the piece. That doesn't exactly fit my understanding of physics, but hey.

The applet works in this way. You may:

• Use the pieces on the right side of the board to populate the main board on the left, or
• Choose the Random button in the lower-right portion of the applet. This populates the grid with 4 - 6 pieces more or less randomly, with no guarantee of a solution existing.
• Choose the From List button, right beneath the Random button. This populates the grid with a board known to have a solution. There were 160+ boards in this bunch at last count, so it should be enough to keep you occupied for a bit.

To move pieces onto the board, click once on the piece to move, then again where you want it moved. Once you've got a configuration you want to try out, click the Remember button, so the applet can restore the configuration for you later. At that point, you can move any of the pieces (the applet will check for legal moves for you) or reset (by hitting the Reset button) the pieces to their original positions. By hitting Solve, the applet will attempt to find a solution for the puzzle. Once that has succeeded (you'll get a message indicating whether a solution was found or not), you may use the Prev and Next buttons to walk through the computer's solution. The Clear button puts the board to its empty state.

If you enjoy the applet, please try out the real game. The applet has some shortcomings, like not being able to modify an existing configuration once it's been memorized, and the physical game doesn't have that shortcoming. There's also at least one configuration that causes the applet to run out of memory. I tried a number of tricks to save on memory, but it's creating a lot of boards to check (it was something like 210K when I think it choked), and I haven't figured out how to save off intermediate results with an applet (wouldn't hold your breath on that one). It's also much more fun to have a bunch of people crowded around the board, making suggestions, than just trying to figure it out alone.

If you live in Salt Lake, the Gateway mall has a game store that carries Binary Arts' work. I think it's something like the Go! game store or something like that... maybe they've got a web site I can link to.

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