[HN Gopher] Show HN: I made a deceptively simple but hard slidin...
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Show HN: I made a deceptively simple but hard sliding puzzle
Author : amenghra
Score : 220 points
Date : 2022-06-02 11:50 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.quaxio.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.quaxio.com)
| mdaniel wrote:
| While I don't suffer from red-green colorblindness, it does
| actually hurt my eyes. One might consider offering a color
| switcher since as best I can tell they just need to be different
| from one another for the puzzle to work
| amenghra wrote:
| Thanks, I updated the colors for the easy level. Hope this pair
| of colors works better.
| myfonj wrote:
| If you have some userstyles / userscript manager or can put
| user CSS into your browser, some patchy CSS:
|
| https://userstyles.world/style/4975/alok-s-sliding-puzzle-cu...
|
| (It will break the moment author will change inline style.)
| mdaniel wrote:
| If I was going to go tho that trouble, I'd just build it
| locally (https://github.com/alokmenghrajani/sliding_puzzle)
|
| My comment was to bring the red-green choice to the author's
| awareness, not to use HN as a complaint forum
| myfonj wrote:
| Sure, and my response was to provide simple POC to try some
| alternative hopefully more accessible appearance on top of
| live version for folks with colour vision troubles and
| potentially for the author as well.
| lovetocode wrote:
| Pretty cool! I was able to solve it fairly quickly. It
| immediately reminded me of how you would solve a rubiks cube.
| mcdonje wrote:
| The medium puzzle is just like the torus puzzle in the
| Exponential Idle app. Solving help: https://exponential-
| idle.fandom.com/wiki/Minigames#Torus_Puz...
| MrDrDr wrote:
| Very nice - the explainer was helpful. Just lost an enjoyable
| 30mins :)
| mihaic wrote:
| A few years back we had a programming challenge to solve the
| generalized medium puzzle. If you want to try solving it through
| code check it out here:
| https://csacademy.com/contest/archive/task/circular_shift_so...
|
| It also has a detailed description of the solution in the more
| complicated cases, depending on the parity of each dimension.
| Perez418 wrote:
| Nice! At first I didn't realize I had to match the small image,
| lol.
| reportgunner wrote:
| The easy mode felt like a rubik's cube lite, I enjoyed it !
| lisper wrote:
| That's not a coincidence. The mathematical structure of both
| puzzles is essentially the same. The moves in both puzzles form
| a non-abelian group, which is the source of the challenge. See
| http://web.mit.edu/sp.268/www/rubik.pdf
| teekert wrote:
| The easy one is solved simply by going for an all red band in the
| middle first (which is easy) and then the end situation is very
| close.
| anderskaseorg wrote:
| The medium level is the same as carykh's Loopover:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95rtiz-V2zM,
| https://loopover.xyz.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| Quixo (the game this seems to be based on) is also deceptively
| simple but Exptime complete
| (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002001902...)
| and was solved after 2 decades (draw at optimal play on a 5x5
| board, win for first player on smaller boards):
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.15895
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > (draw at optimal play on a 5x5 board, win for first player on
| smaller boards)
|
| Somewhat relatedly, I keep wondering how board size affects the
| game of chess in particular.
|
| It seems that a 1x8 board definitely leads to a stalemate
| (because the pawns in front of the kings would block each
| other), but at some point adding new columns (with the relevant
| pieces) makes the game impossible to exhaustively search, and
| at least plausibly introduces the ability for one of the
| players (presumably white) to win with perfect play.
|
| That ability for a winning strategy to emerge just beyond our
| ability to compute is somehow tantalising.
| amenghra wrote:
| Never heard of Quixo, thanks for sharing. My domain name was
| picked randomly a decade ago among the remaining short-ish
| names -- being similar in name is a coincidence.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| I assume that the name was a nod to the original game, my
| bad.
|
| I looked a bit for similar puzzles, and it seems this class
| of puzzles has a better name: A "Toroidal Sliding Block
| Puzzle"[1]
|
| [1]:
| https://puzzlingiphone.wordpress.com/2008/11/22/toroidal-
| sli...
| amenghra wrote:
| Toroidal Sliding Puzzle => chefkiss emoji
| boobsbr wrote:
| This game has been invented before.
|
| Not a dunk on you, people come up with similar or identical ideas
| all the time without knowing at all about previous instances of
| the idea.
|
| I first learned about this game from a YouTuber named Cary KH, he
| named his game Loop Over.
|
| https://youtu.be/95rtiz-V2zM
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| I was developing a similar game in Unity but decided to go
| further and add portals, rotations, splitting and other
| mechanics. Unfortunately, I have never managed to polish it
| (those 20% that take 80% of time, duh). I hope one day someone
| will implement something similar.
| ouid wrote:
| heres a non-constructive solution for the medium puzzle. the
| commutator of a row move a and a column move b (defined
| [a,b]=aba^-1b^-1). is a three cycle. it is not hard two see that
| any three cycle is conjugate to either a commutator or a product
| of two commutators [a,b]*[-a,b]. the three cycles generate the
| alternating group, which is maximal in Sn. but the group action
| also contains a 4 cycle, which is not in the alternating group.
| so the action must be all of Sn.
| alas_141 wrote:
| I liked it. Very reminiscent of a rubik's cube. I found it's
| easier to make solid stripes and manipulate from there instead of
| going for the checkerboard right away.
| shaneos wrote:
| Fun and deceptively difficult, nicely done!
| CodeIsTheEnd wrote:
| Very similar to a game posted a couple months ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30956775 (368 points, 124
| comments)
| amenghra wrote:
| I know, the hard level is however novel. I started prototyping
| this game several weeks ago but Shubham beat me to the punch.
| myaccount80 wrote:
| Wow. Back in high school (~2011) I made this game as an ios app.
| I remember I published a video on YouTube and a few months later
| I found a copy on the App Store. Maybe it was just a coincidence.
| Unfortunately I don't find my video on YouTube anymore, can it be
| that YouTube deletes old videos ?
| fortysixdegrees wrote:
| I was finding this hard then wanted to see how long it would take
| to solve just quickly sliding randomly. Turns out very quick! If
| the number of moves was limited this wouldn't work
| shikoba wrote:
| Nice game, but not really difficult. Try to implement SquareMinx
| instead ;)
| [deleted]
| amenghra wrote:
| Did you try the hardest level?
| shikoba wrote:
| Yes, it was easy. I know how to solve a lot of twisty
| puzzles, I have a lot of experience. Yours is an easy one.
| Squareminx, is the real monster.
|
| edit: you put tiles at random for shuffle? It's not correct
| for the hard level. Only even permutations are accessible.
|
| edit: maybe I was tired when counting my permutations, forget
| the last edit
| amenghra wrote:
| The initial position starts from the goal and makes 100
| random moves. So it's guaranteed to be solvable.
| s-video wrote:
| I felt so cool for beating it and then I saw "Current level:
| Easy"
| TOMDM wrote:
| Agreed, I thought I had it cracked when I noticed that I just
| needed to get the spacing right on Easy, but man the difficulty
| is a cliff going into medium.
|
| EDIT: Oh Ok, Medium isn't that hard either, much harder than
| easy though, just figuring out the last "row" is to toothsome
| part.
| efxhoy wrote:
| Thanks OP! I had a shitty day and this was really nice.
| aronhegedus wrote:
| I struggled with the easy, then found a method for medium, and
| then medium was easy:)
|
| I can solve rubiks cube <30 seconds, and it definitely reminds me
| of it.
|
| Thanks!
| froh wrote:
| Would it make sense to increase the difficulty more gradually?
| And independent of each other? Like size, number of colors,
| degrees of freedom, individually, instead if just easy medium
| hard, with presets?
| amenghra wrote:
| That was my initial idea (if you peek at the code, you'll see
| it's simple to create a 2-color + hard-mode). But it turns out
| that hard is quite hard, even with just 2-colors. So I picked 3
| instead of 4 levels.
| Bayko wrote:
| Haven't had time to explore much but is the solution always
| guaranteed?
| amenghra wrote:
| Yes. The initial position starts from the goal and makes
| 100 random moves.
| lisper wrote:
| If this puzzle reminds you of a Rubik's cube that is not a
| coincidence. The mathematical structure of both puzzles is
| essentially the same. The moves in both puzzles form a non-
| abelian group, which is the source of the challenge. See
| http://web.mit.edu/sp.268/www/rubik.pdf
|
| In fact, a fun meta-puzzle is to find a three-dimensional analog
| to this two-dimensional puzzle.
| yuchi wrote:
| A 3d dimension version would require wrapping... I wonder if
| such a shape exists! (I don't want to spoil this micro
| challenge more than I already did)
| GuB-42 wrote:
| And the meta-meta puzzle is, once you found a 3D equivalent,
| make it a physical object.
|
| Both the "easy/medium" and "hard" puzzles look tricky to make
| in their own way, my gut feeling is that he "hard" puzzle is
| the easier one to design.
| abnry wrote:
| It might be helpful to note that the moves form a group, but
| the puzzle itself is the group action of this group on the
| cubes/squares/pieces.
|
| In this context it reveals the usefulness of commutators, which
| are moves of the form ABA'B', where A and B are some sequence
| of moves and ' denotes inverse.
|
| In general A and B aren't commutative, but with respect to a
| subset of the pieces, the actions of A and B are effectively
| commutative, so ABA'B' will do nothing to those pieces. Which
| means you can get some simple permutation control over the
| remaining (usually much smaller) pieces of the puzzle.
| bombcar wrote:
| With both, a key can be learning how to "swap" two pieces
| without modifying the others around them - once you have that
| worked out, you basically can solve it even if not in the most
| efficient manner possible.
| bradrn wrote:
| > In fact, a fun meta-puzzle is to find a three-dimensional
| analog to this two-dimensional puzzle.
|
| I believe this puzzle is equivalent to a Ehovxf phor ba n gbehf
| (rot13).
| malf wrote:
| It's always a gbehf
| enchiridion wrote:
| Can someone explain that notion?
| danbruc wrote:
| No notation, ROT13 encryption [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROT13
| ICodeSometimes wrote:
| TIL! It definitely struck a cord with my old rubik's cube
| solving days
| [deleted]
| taeric wrote:
| Fun. I have a blog I wrote years ago that had fun seeing a
| Rubik's cube as permutations. I can see how that could map
| somewhat to this. I should pick that back up.
|
| Post was: https://taeric.github.io/cube-permutations-1.html
| theideaofcoffee wrote:
| My first thought was the same, "ah it's just a group puzzle
| like a rubik's". In my case, understanding the math doesn't
| make up for me being completely useless in solving it.
| Jill_the_Pill wrote:
| Whereas I solved it by instinct and am still not sure how.
| Maybe it is better to be lucky than good!
| tontonius wrote:
| Nice little game! Took me a few minutes to figure it out (I think
| having played with Rubiks cube helped somewhat)
| tontonius wrote:
| solved medium and on to hard now!
| routeroff wrote:
| Same as you, but I took 90% on the time only on the last line,
| the first three are solved use basic swipe of two squares, as
| in a beginner cube method.
| pmarreck wrote:
| why has it taken this long for someone to come up with a 2D
| analog to the 3D Rubik's Cube? :O
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(page generated 2022-06-02 23:01 UTC)