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38 points belter | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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oliwary ◴[] No.42742398[source]
Interesting! I think there is a lot of math going on in these kind of games. I have noticed interesting patterns in my game https://videopuzzle.org/ as well.

In daily mode, everyone gets a video scrambled into 4x4 pieces, in the same way, and needs to unscramble it. The operations available to unscramble a video are swapping a tile, and shifting the entire board. The lowest score every day is usually 12-14, but sometimes much lower.

Before I introduced the shifting function, surprisingly, every puzzle could only be solved in an either even or odd number of moves. Some days, all solutions would be 12-14-16 etc, while other days only 13-15-17 were possible. The arrows have changed this, as you can sometimes shave another move off if you use it smartly.

replies(1): >>42742453 #
wetmore ◴[] No.42742453[source]
Google even and odd permutations to learn more :)
replies(2): >>42742823 #>>42743921 #
1. JadeNB ◴[] No.42743921[source]
What a lovely independent discovery! The context is similar to the (un)solvability of the 15 puzzle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_puzzle#Solvability