Rush Hour (board game)

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Rush Hour is a sliding block puzzle invented by Nob Yoshigahara in the late 1970s and first sold in the United States in 1996. It is manufactured by ThinkFun (formerly Binary Arts). The goal of the game is to get a red car out of a six-by-six grid full of automobiles by moving the other vehicles out of its way. However, the cars and trucks (set up before play according to a puzzle card) obstructing your path are so intertwined that a typical puzzle requires many moves to complete.

ThinkFun now sells Rush Hour spin-offs Rush Hour Jr., Safari Rush Hour, and Railroad Rush Hour, with puzzles by Scott Kim.

The regular version comes with 40 puzzles, and the deluxe edition with 60, but the regular version includes a travel bag. Extra puzzle card packs (in addition to the 40 or 60 cards included with the game) are also available. The deluxe edition also comes with shiny cars. The cards with higher numbers are harder to solve, with 5 levels. Grand Master is the hardest of all.

When generalized so that it can be played on an arbitrarily large board, the problem of deciding if a Rush Hour problem has a solution is PSPACE-complete.^[1]

Contents 1 Description 2 See also 3 References 4 External links 4.1 Computer Implementations

[edit] Description

The board is a 6x6 grid with grooves in the tiles to allow cars to slide. The game comes with 11 cars and 4 trucks, each colored differently. The cars take up 2 squares each; the trucks take up 3.

Each puzzle card shows how the game is set up. While it is shown exactly which cars/trucks of which colors go where, placing cars of different colors in different squares does not matter since they are equal in size. This still makes it difficult to solve the puzzle using the instructions on the back.

The cards are each numbered. Higher numbers represent more challenging puzzles.

Cars and trucks can only be moved within a straight line along the track. They cannot be rotated.

[edit] See also

• Sliding block puzzle
• Combination puzzles
• Mechanical puzzles

[edit] References

1. ^ Gary Flake and Eric Baum. "Rush Hour is PSPACE-complete, or why you should generously tip parking lot attendants". http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/266206.html. 

[edit] External links

• Rush Hour at Puzzles.COM
• "Rush Hour" hardest configurations at ULB

[edit] Computer Implementations

• The Online version with all 160 original levels in Java
• The Pocket PC version with all 160 original levels for Windows CE and Windows Mobile 5.0.
• A Rush Hour implementation in Java
• Rush Hour, a multi-level Flash implementation
• RushHour by Bunnylabs, a Flash implementation with isometric view
• PyTraffic, a Python implementation