Rush Hour (board game)
Encyclopedia
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).
ThinkFun now sells Rush Hour spin-offs Rush Hour Jr., Safari Rush Hour, and Railroad Rush Hour, with puzzles by Scott Kim
. An iOS version of the game has been released in 2010 with both free and paid versions (the latter with more puzzles and features).
The regular version comes with 40 puzzles split up into 4 different difficulties, ranging from Beginner to Expert. The deluxe edition has 60 puzzles and has an extra difficulty, the Grand Master, which is harder than Expert. Puzzles falling in this difficulty range can only be sold with expansion packs of the original game. 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.
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
.
Each puzzle card shows which colored cars get placed on the board and also where they should be placed.
Each card has a different level number. The higher the level number, the more difficult the puzzle.
Cars and trucks can only be moved within a straight line along the grid. They cannot be rotated.
Nob Yoshigahara
Nobuyuki Yoshigahara was perhaps Japan's most celebrated inventor, collector, solver, and communicator of puzzles....
in the late 1970s and first sold in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1996. It is manufactured by ThinkFun
ThinkFun
ThinkFun, formerly known as Binary Arts, was founded in 1985 by Bill Ritchie and Andrea Barthello. The two started the company from the basement of their home in Virginia, with a product base that initially consisted of four games invented by a family friend William Keister...
(formerly Binary Arts).
ThinkFun now sells Rush Hour spin-offs Rush Hour Jr., Safari Rush Hour, and Railroad Rush Hour, with puzzles by Scott Kim
Scott Kim
Scott Kim is an American puzzle and computer game designer, artist, and author. He started writing an occasional "Boggler" column for Discover magazine in 1990, and became an exclusive columnist in 1999, and created hundreds of other puzzles for magazines such as Scientific American and Games, as...
. An iOS version of the game has been released in 2010 with both free and paid versions (the latter with more puzzles and features).
The regular version comes with 40 puzzles split up into 4 different difficulties, ranging from Beginner to Expert. The deluxe edition has 60 puzzles and has an extra difficulty, the Grand Master, which is harder than Expert. Puzzles falling in this difficulty range can only be sold with expansion packs of the original game. 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.
When generalized
Generalized game
In computational complexity theory, a generalized game is a game that has been generalized so that it can be played on a board of any size. For example, generalized chess is the game of chess played on an n-by-n board, with 2n pieces on each side.Complexity theory studies the asymptotic difficulty...
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
PSPACE-complete
In complexity theory, a decision problem is PSPACE-complete if it is in the complexity class PSPACE, and every problem in PSPACE can be reduced to it in polynomial time...
.
Objective
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) obstruct the path which makes the puzzle harder.Description
The board is a 6x6 grid with grooves in the tiles to allow cars to slide, and an exit hole which according to the puzzle cards, only the red car can escape. The game comes with 12 cars and 4 trucks, each colored differently. The cars take up 2 squares each; and the trucks take up 3.Each puzzle card shows which colored cars get placed on the board and also where they should be placed.
Each card has a different level number. The higher the level number, the more difficult the puzzle.
Cars and trucks can only be moved within a straight line along the grid. They cannot be rotated.
Expansions
Three expansions were released, card set 2 which comes with a new escape car, card set 3 which comes with a white limo and card set 4 which comes with a taxi. The car sets come with 40 new challenges each, 10 intermediate, 10 advanced, 10 expert and 10 grandmaster challenges which can only be brought with the expansion sets.External links
- Rush Hour at Puzzles.COM
- "Rush Hour" hardest configurations at ULB
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
- PyTraffic, a Python implementation
- TclTk Rush Hour, an implementation in TclTclTcl is a scripting language created by John Ousterhout. Originally "born out of frustration", according to the author, with programmers devising their own languages intended to be embedded into applications, Tcl gained acceptance on its own...
. - Traffic Jam by Dr Mike, an iPhone version.