Rush Hour

Sequential Movement - Rush Hour

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Designer	:	Nob Yoshigahara (This version)
Craftsman	:	Thinkfun
Category	:	Sequential Movement

Rush Hour is a contemporary sliding piece puzzle. It was first offered for sale in the United States in 1996, but was sold prior to that in Japan as Tokyo Parking and made by Toyo Glass. The objective is to move cars and trucks back and forth to allow the red car to get out of the parking lot through the exit on the right side of the board. It comes with forty cards giving various setups ranging in difficulty from very easy to diabolical. The variety of these puzzles is vast. In 1986, L. Edward Hordern, a British puzzle collector produced a 249 page book titled Sliding Piece Puzzles (what else?) with an analysis of 250 sliding piece puzzles from his collection. A nice collection of Java sliding piece puzzles can be in the Java puzzle collection of Hirofumi Fujiwara. The Java source code is available. In 1996, Karl Hörnell developed a Java program called Car Jam that can be configured to present "parking lot" puzzles more complicated than those in Rush Hour. Some of the features are: Trucks can occupy either 3 or 4 squares Squares can be filled in with unmovable "concrete blocks". A number of bombs can be made available to blow up cars and trucks. The parking lot exit can be placed on any side. The landscape and pavement can be selected by the player. Given the complexity of the puzzles in Rush Hour, I can't imagine what could be devised given these capabilities. Click on the car to play Car Jam and make sure to read the HELP.