Transport puzzle
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Transport puzzles are logistical puzzles, which often represent real-life transport problems.
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[edit] Description
In transport puzzles you move yourself and/or tokens through a given landscape.
As in rearrangement puzzles, no piece is ever lost or added to the board. In contrast to rearrangement puzzles, however, in transport puzzles all tokens have to follow certain routes given on the board; they cannot be lifted off the board and placed on faraway positions that have no visible connection to the from-position. Hence transport puzzles often mean that the player has to move (physical) objects in a very restricted space. The player may or may not be part of the game (himself or represented by a token on a board).
[edit] Types of transport puzzles
- Tour puzzles are first-person transport puzzles : the player does the tour him/herself or is represented by a token/man on the board.
- labyrinths : player/token runs one convoluted path way, no dead ends.
- mazes : player/token runs fixed set of pathways, many dead ends.
- Sokoban - type puzzles : man pushes objects into place.
- other first-person transport puzzles. Some of them are elimination puzzles : these are similar to Sokoban-type puzzles, but you have to eliminate pieces on the way rather than pushing them around.
- Other transport games: The player is not represented in the game.
- cube puzzles : move little cubes around the board.
- sliding puzzles : slide pieces (on a board) into place.
- Samuel Loyd's fifteen puzzle is the best known example of these.
- train shunting puzzles : move trains and carriages along tracks.
- river crossing puzzles : move a set of pieces across a river using a bridge or boat. Certain conditions apply.
[edit] Examples of transport puzzles
Only those games are listed here which do not fall into any of the above categories. For more examples of transport puzzles click the sub-types listed above.
- Sokoban : move boxes into place (computer game).
[edit] Literature
The famous British puzzler Henry Dudeney added several puzzles to this category.
