Gridlock Puzzles (Puzzleship)

About Gridlock Puzzles (Puzzleship)

Vehicles slide only forwards and backwards in the direction they point, never sideways and never through one another. Freeing the taxi means unpicking a chain of blockers in the right order, and nothing is hidden: every vehicle is visible from the start, so the puzzle is entirely about sequence.

The sliding car puzzle reached most people through the board game Rush Hour and the phone games after it. Following the chain backwards from the taxi usually finds the one vehicle that must move first. Space matters as much as position, since a long vehicle needs several free cells to shift. A par score shows the shortest solution.

Puzzleship publishes six jams of Gridlock Puzzles a day, graded from very easy to ultra hard. Each day's jams are numbered and dated, the same for every player, and appear at midnight in your own time zone; earlier days stay playable in the archive. The site is free with ads, and a premium plan removes them.

How to play Gridlock Puzzles (Puzzleship)

1. Open Gridlock Puzzles and pick one of the day's six jams.
2. Find what blocks the taxi's row, and what blocks those vehicles.
3. Drag a vehicle along its own lane to move it.
4. Clear a path and slide the taxi out through the exit.
5. Compare your move count with the par.

Tips

• Work backwards from the taxi through the chain of blockers.
• Do not fill a gap that a long vehicle will need later.
• If you are over par, look for a vehicle you moved and moved back.
• Sometimes moving a car further than needed opens two lanes at once.

Questions