Slide X

Name
Slide X

Designer
Yasuhiro Hashimoto

Manufacturer & Availability
Produced by DYLAN-Kobo (PUZZLE of MINE). Copies may still be available.

Type & Classification
Sliding Block Puzzle

Dimensions
7.6cm x 9.8cm x 0.4cm

Materials & Construction
Laser cut acrylic. Very precisely cut with sharp edges, resulting in an excellent quality puzzle.  Tolerances are just nice and the combo colours of red, white, blue and black make the puzzle stand out.

Overview
Slide X was Iwahiro's (Hirokazu Iwasawa) IPP35 Exchange Puzzle in Ottawa, Canada last year. 

There are a total of 8 pieces; 4 white rectangles and 4 black "L" pieces. Together they cover a substantial part of the red tray.

This is a sliding block puzzle with a bit of difference. Instead of moving the pieces from a start position to an end position as what most puzzlers are used to, the challenge is to form various silhouette shapes. A great and unusal design concept nonetheless!

The main challenge consist of a warm-up "practice run" (see photo) to change the silhouette of a "red cross" to a "U". This one takes 14 moves. Not a lot of moves but because now you are focusing on the "U" shape, the puzzle is harder than the 14 moves would suggest (at least for me). So what I did was to focus my attention on where the pieces should end up and tried to ignore the "U". 

Now for the main problem which requires a minimum of 48 moves, the instructions do not come showing the end position of the individual pieces. So the starting point is probably to pack the pieces into the tray to see how the "T" is formed. And then figure it out from there. A photo would certainly help! In any event, it was too difficult for me and I gave up after a number of tries. 8 pieces to slide is really no joke. But I did succeed in one of the other easier challenges on the separate problem sheet.

Difficulty
There are a total of 14 challenges in all with increasing levels of difficulty, ranging from 14 to 114 moves! I am not good at sliding puzzles. Notwithstanding, I think this one is really difficult especially for the higher level challenges. Definitely a sliding puzzle not to be missed by die-hard sliding puzzle enthusiasts.