Minoru Abe Sliding Tile Puzzles

I was thrilled to get the chance to acquire these two ‘Minoru Originals’ recently, years ago I would venture over to Nick Baxter’s online applet to play the many different versions that were displayed.

Here’s a description from Jim Storer’s website for ‘Neo Black & White’:

“The two blank 1x1 pieces are glued to the tray and cannot move. The center blank 2 by 1 keeper piece is removed to make the starting position shown on the right above. The goal is to slide the pieces so that BLACK is on top and WHITE is on the bottom. 

Hordern's book shows 198 rectilinear (237 straight-line) moves and the Puzzler's Tribute book, in a chapter coauthored by Minoru Abe, shows 190 rectilinear (231 straight-line) moves.”

Here’s Jim Storer’s description from his site for ‘Block Ten’:

“Starting from various positions on the 6 by 4 unit tray, the goal is to move the 2x2 piece to the top. The two 1x1 pieces painted black are glued to the tray and cannot move. The following page show a variety of starting positions; of these positions 17, 20, 32, 35, 40, and 45 are symmetric ones; here they are in increasing order of the number of rectilinear moves required, along with six examples of non-symmetric positions:”