Sliding Arrow Through The Bottle

Here's a nice sliding block puzzle that does not have a stratospheric number of moves. Its also a cute and colourful one and this was designed by Serhiy Grabarchuk, who is very well-known for his eye-catching and interesting looking sliding puzzle designs. 

START POSITION

END POSITION

I have two of his other works which were reviewed earlier, his Sorter and One Fish Another Fish. I obtained the Sliding Arrow puzzle via a private exchange with fellow puzzler Dinair Namdarian, who also produced it. The puzzle is precision laser cut and well-made.

The Sliding Arrow measures about 14cm x 11cm and consists of a typical tray and 9 loose pieces. Unlike most sliding puzzles consisting of squares and rectangular shaped pieces, Serhiy had designed some of the pieces in the shape of a "bottle" and an "arrow". And this was fashioned into their shapes using translucent green acrylic for the bottle and yellow for the arrow. The "shaft" of the arrow is not another individual moving piece but cleverly recessed into the base of the tray.

The object is to get from the Start to the End positions as shown in the photos. Officially, the least number of moves to arrive at the final solution is 31. Not a lot compared to some other other sliding puzzles, for example, those from Minoru Abe. However, the moves are tricky and if you get the sequence wrong from the early stages, you will hit a dead end(s) and will have to re-arrange the pieces and begin all over again. This happened to me quite a number of times! Good thing most sliding puzzles have exposed pieces!

The Sliding Arrow is one of Serhiy Grabarchuk's more well-known designs and while the number of moves is not a lot, it is far more challenging than it appears.