🚗 Parking Panic

How to Play

The goal

Drive the red car off the right-hand side of the car park. Everything else is only there to be got out of the way.

How things move

Every vehicle slides along its own length and no other way. A car lying across can only go left and right; one lying up and down can only go up and down. Nothing turns, nothing lifts out, and nothing drives through anything else.

Moving one

Drag it. Or tap it to pick it out, then tap an empty square along its line to send it there. With a keyboard, tab to a vehicle and use the arrow keys.

What counts as a move

Sliding one vehicle counts as one move, however far it goes. So shifting a lorry three squares is one move, not three — which is why it is worth looking for the long shove rather than a series of little ones.

The number in brackets

That is the fewest moves the jam can possibly be cleared in. It is not a guess: every jam here was solved by working outwards from the starting position through every arrangement in turn, so the first way out found is the shortest one there is. Matching it is genuinely hard.

Hints

A hint works out the way out from your car park as it stands and makes one move along it — it is never reading from a stored answer. If you have jammed yourself so solidly that there is no way out at all, it tells you that instead, which is worth knowing. A jam solved with hints does not go on the fewest-moves board.

Two ways to play

Pick a jam lets you play any of them, in any order, as long as you like — that board keeps the fewest moves anyone has managed on each one. Run the lot plays all fifteen in order against the clock, and gives you a score.

How a run is scored

Each jam is worth up to thirty times its own difficulty, so clearing a twenty-five move jam is worth far more than a four-move one — you cannot win by rushing the easy ones and giving up on the rest. Two thirds of it is for moves: match the fewest possible and you get all of it, take twice as many and you get half. The other third is for time: finish inside the par time — five seconds a move, which is generous — and you get all of it. Every hint costs you a quarter of that jam. A perfect run is 5,370 points.

If one beats you

Leave this one moves you on. That jam scores nothing, but the run carries on — being stuck on number nine should not end your afternoon.

Getting stuck is normal

You can shuffle a car park into a state it cannot get out of. That is part of the puzzle, not a fault — take a move back, or start again, and look for a different order.