About Crates

A storeroom seen from above, a few wooden crates, and the same number of marked spots on the floor. Walk the worker around and push every crate onto a spot. That is all there is to it, and the difficulty lives in one rule: crates can be pushed but never pulled. Push one into a corner and nothing will ever get it out; push two side by side against a wall and neither can move again.

So every push is a small commitment, and a level is mostly about order: which crate has to move first to make room, which one has to go the long way round, and which spot has to be filled last because filling it early would wall off the rest. The worker can walk anywhere that is clear, so walking is cheap — it is the pushes that need thought.

Every level here was built backwards from the finished room, pulling crates away from their spots one step at a time, so each one is known to be solvable and the fewest steps it can be done in is known exactly: that is the par shown above the board. When a crate is pushed somewhere it can never come back from, the game says so straight away rather than leaving you to find out ten moves later, and undo takes back one push at a time. The daily challenge gives everyone the same three-crate level and ranks the day on steps, walking included, with the clock breaking ties.

Tips to win

• Before pushing anything, look at each spot and ask which side a crate can arrive from — a spot against a wall can only be reached along that wall
• Never push a crate into a corner unless the corner is a spot
• A crate against a wall can only slide along that wall; make sure there is a spot on it before you put it there
• Fill the spots furthest from the door first, so the crates you push later do not have to get past the ones already home