Traffic Jam

Slide the vehicles to free the red car.

A 6 × 6 parking lot crammed with cars and trucks: clear the way to the exit. Every puzzle is generated and measured by an exhaustive search that guarantees its minimum number of moves.

Players: 1 player
Length: 1 to 15 min

Solo

Play Traffic Jam

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How to play

Object of the game

The parking lot is completely jammed: get the red car out through the opening to the right of its row.

Rules

Each vehicle moves forwards or backwards along its length, never sideways.
Vehicles cannot overlap or leave the parking lot (except the red car, through the exit).
Moving a vehicle one or several squares counts as one move.

Controls

Drag a vehicle with your finger or the mouse.
Tap a vehicle to select it, then tap a free square in its row (or column) to drive it there.
Keyboard: arrow keys to move the selected vehicle (or to select the neighbour in that direction), Tab or Space to move on to the next one, U to undo, H for a hint.

Levels

The minimum number of moves is guaranteed for each level: from 4 to 8 moves on Easy, up to over 32 moves (the record reached is 49) on Devilish.

Tip: start from the exit and ask yourself which vehicle blocks the red car, then what blocks that vehicle, and so on. The three-square trucks are often the key.

About the AI

The generator explores by breadth-first search all the positions reachable from an arrangement of vehicles (often tens of thousands), calculates for each the exact distance to the exit, then keeps the farthest position: its minimum number of moves is therefore proven. An escalation (adding, removing or moving vehicles) increases the difficulty; for the Expert and Devilish levels, it starts from hard arrangements computed in advance and mutates them while keeping the difficulty guaranteed. The hint and “AI solve” use an exact breadth-first search: every move proposed belongs to an optimal solution.

Records (gap from the optimum and time) only count without hints or help from the AI.

Difficulty levels

EasyFrom 4 to 8 moves minimum.
MediumFrom 10 to 15 moves minimum.
HardFrom 16 to 22 moves minimum.
ExpertFrom 23 to 31 moves minimum.
DiabolicalOver 32 moves minimum, up to 49.