Fifteen puzzle
The peak popularity of the 15 puzzle occurred in the last decades of the 19th century. Children and adults loved this game, and boxes with square tiles were in every home. Then came a period of semi-oblivion, where the 15 puzzle modestly gave way to computer games. Online 15 puzzle brought new life to the old game.
History of the game
The 15 puzzle has an author, something not many games can boast of. Two people, Samuel Loyd and Noyes Palmer Chapman, claimed authorship rights. The game appeared in early 1880 in the United States, was written about in newspapers, but Loyd's name was never mentioned. Based on this, 15 puzzle historians concluded that the puzzle's creator was postmaster Noy Chapman. An argument in his favor is that in 1874, Chapman proposed a puzzle to his friends in which sixteen numbered squares had to be arranged in rows so that the sum in each row equaled 34.
The postmaster's son brought the puzzle to Anna and James Belden, who made several copies. One copy somehow ended up in a school for the hearing impaired, where handmade production began, and by 1879, boxes with tiles were being sold in Boston. That same year, artist Matthias J. Rice began producing "The Gem Puzzle".
The logical game became even more popular when a dentist offered a prize for solving it. By 1880, the future 15 puzzle was already conquering Europe, Russia, Australia, and New Zealand, but for some reason, Chapman was denied a patent. In the United States, the fascination with "15" was compared to madness, with poems, articles, and studies being written about the game.
Interesting facts
- In the puzzle produced by Matthias J. Rice (1879), the numbered tiles had to be arranged in a random order and then moved into ascending order. In another version, all tiles were already in place, and only the tiles numbered "14" and "15" needed to be swapped. This turned out to be the most difficult challenge—solving it was only possible in half the cases.
- The modern 15 puzzle is more diverse than its predecessors. In addition to classic versions with numbers, there are puzzles where players must reconstruct images or form words.
- The hardest version of the 15 puzzle is the magic square, where numbers must be arranged in rows with the same sum.
The 15 puzzle is not as simple as it seems. You'll realize this when you try to solve the puzzle. Test your intellectual abilities with the online 15 puzzle!
