My dad bought me one on a long train ride, which had 8-way slides and a few years down the line, I happened to find it & ended up writing out a solver[1]. The

My dad bought me one on a long train ride, which had 8-way slides and a few years down the line, I happened to find it & ended up writing out a solver[1]. The problem is not particularly difficult though, I spent most of my time building out a graphviz "solution trail" to see my rankings[2]. [1] - http://notmysock.org/code/8puzzle.py http://notmysock.org/code/8puzzle.py [2] - http://notmysock.org/code/8puzzle.png http://notmysock.org/code/8puzzle.png