In case any of you don't know, sliding tile puzzles are the same as the 15 puzzle; you have a grid of scrambled images that, when slid into proper configuration, eventually make one giant picture. For reference, think of the red coins in Mario 64's lava level.
Anyways, I've recently come to an impasse. While making a quick run through a puzzle game, I came across the final trial: a 6x6 sliding puzzle. As easy as they are to solve, I don't have the sheer brain power to deduce what the optimal path for such a puzzle would be. Therefore, I'm challenging whoever is reading this to create a program that solves sliding tile puzzles and outputs the optimal moves for any said puzzle. There is currently a java or flash applet out there that solves randomized 4x4 puzzles, but that does me no good.
The given puzzle is as follows (X is the blank tile):
1 9 8 23 10 11
7 2 20 5 3 6
13 15 X 18 17 4
19 14 22 16 24 12
25 26 21 28 35 29
31 32 27 33 34 30
There is a site that is able to randomly create and solve sliding tile puzzles, but it doesn't allow you to input the position values for the tile. Feel free to check it out.
