Jam

Puzzle · plays in your browser, no download

Slide the cars out of each other’s way until the red one can leave. Nothing turns, nothing reverses.

Where it comes from

The square of jammed cars is a boxed puzzle designed by a Japanese puzzle maker: a grid, a red car, and one way out. The cars move only forwards and back, never sideways, and the only thing you can do is make room.

It is the puzzle that teaches one thing better than any other: the right move almost always takes the red car further from the exit. Play on instinct and you shove it at the gap and jam; solve it and you start at the other end of the grid.

How to play

Get the red car out through the gap on the right.
Drag a car with your finger. It follows you and stops where something is in the way.
The dark ones are three long — they are the hard ones to shift.
↺ undoes as much as you like, and ⟳ at the top starts this jam again.
Ten jams per level. Three stars means eleven cars and more than twenty moves.

What makes this one different

Every car slides only the way it points and nothing ever turns, so the whole puzzle is order. The dark cars are three long and they are the ones that will not shift. A move is one square, so sliding a car three places costs three — and the second number, the fewest possible, is exact. Ten jams per level.

Drag a car and it follows your finger, stopping where something is in the way, so there is nothing fiddly about the input: the difficulty is all in the order. Undo takes back as much as you like and the restart button is at the top, because a jam you have tangled is better started again than untangled.

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