15 Puzzle

The 15 Puzzle is a square tablet containing 15 smaller square tiles labeled with the integers 1 to 15, set so that only one square may be moved at a time into the only available empty square by a move up or down or left or right (but never diagonally). The goal of the puzzle is to take a puzzle in an unsorted initial state, such as

and set each tile in its proper order.

The puzzle was invented by Noyes Chapman, who also created a famously unsolvable version with 14 and 15 switched. His original idea was to construct a puzzle with 16 tiles that would be moved to form a magic square with 34 as its magic constant. The 15 Puzzle was initially made of wood; today they are almost always made of plastic. Darling calls it “the Rubik’s cube of its day.”