A free sliding tile puzzle for your PC
Slide Puzzle in Games by Zaweba jumbles a painted picture into numbered tiles; slide them back into order in as few moves as you can, offline and free.
Games by Zaweba includes Slide Puzzle, a free sliding tile puzzle for Windows. A painted picture is cut into numbered tiles and jumbled, with one gap, and you slide tiles into the gap until every number is back in order, reading left to right and top to bottom, with the gap in the bottom right corner. Fewer moves is better.
It lives on the Puzzles shelf, runs offline with no adverts and no account, and keeps your plays and best score on the game's tile.
Moving the tiles
You can only ever move a tile into the gap, so every move is really a choice of which neighbour of the gap to slide. With the mouse, click a tile that is in line with the gap. With the keyboard, the arrow keys slide a tile into the gap, which many people find faster once they are used to it, because your eyes can stay on the picture rather than the pointer.
Two small helpers make a big difference. N turns the numbers on or off, so you can solve by the picture alone if you want a harder go, or keep the numbers on while you learn. Holding P lets you peek at the finished picture, which is the easiest way to remember where a patch of sky or a corner of field belongs.
A method that always gets there
Sliding puzzles look chaotic, but there is a calm way through. Solve the top row first, one tile at a time, then the next row, and leave the last two rows until the end. Once the top rows are in place you never need to disturb them again, and the puzzle shrinks in front of you.
The fiddly part is always the end of a row. If you slide the last tile of a row straight into place, you usually knock the one beside it out. The usual trick is to bring the last two tiles of a row into position together, one stacked below the other, and then turn them into the row with a short loop of moves. It takes a few tries to see it, and then it becomes second nature.
The bottom two rows are best solved column by column from the left, pairing a tile from one row with the one beneath it. By the time you reach the last corner there are only a few tiles left to cycle round the gap.
Chasing fewer moves
Getting the picture back is the first goal; doing it in fewer moves is the one that keeps you coming back. Your best score is kept per game and per mode, so you can see whether today's attempt beat last week's. Wasted moves usually come from sliding a tile back and forth while you think, so plan a little before each run of moves instead of feeling your way.
Opening Slide Puzzle in Games by Zaweba
From the library, open the Puzzles shelf or type the name in the search box. Each game opens on a title card with its rules and controls, F1 brings them back during play, Esc pauses and F11 fills the screen with the picture. If you like it, star the tile and it appears in Favourites next time.
Everything in the app, pictures included, is drawn in code and every sound is made the same way, so nothing has to be downloaded and nothing goes online. It is a good puzzle for a short break, and a good one to hand to a child who likes pictures more than numbers, with the numbers switched on to help.
