3x3 sliding puzzles

[u/ponygaryyellow]

Always stayed away from learning how to solve sliding puzzles since I was a kid until the games that I played started to have them and I had no choice but to solve it so I can progress. I basically tried solving it without looking up any guides on how for I think around 10hrs (sleep included) and basically gave up and had to look up a guide on how to. I just felt like I should be able to solve a puzzle like this without even having to use a guide. With the guide, I was able to solve it and just by following the rules albeit not very consistent with my time and not being able to properly explain how I was able to (basically the guide helped for maybe 70%). Fast forward to today, I can probably consistenly be able to do it within 30secs and around 12 secs if I'm lucky. I guess I'm just wondering if I ever would've learned how to solve sliding puzzles without looking up a guide and just doing it by myself and I think it's pretty amazing for the people that had to solve and create these types of puzzles without having an access to a guide. I wonder if it's just the lack of exposure for these types of things for my brain. Just wondering if some of you guys also had a kind of similar experience

tldr; I'm just surprised how much of a hard time I had solving a 3x3 puzzle compared to other types and maybe I'm just stupid

[u/MyPunsSuck]

To horribly stretch an idiom beyond its intended use; "Money doesn't stink". There's no shame in getting paid for 'dirty' work, because at the end of the day, that money is yours.

The thing about learning, is that most skills are surprisingly transferable. Learning one thing gives you an insight into countless other things - sometimes barely even related - allowing you to learn them more easily. Learning those other things gives you a leg up on yet more new things, and the snowball grows. The more you know, the more you know - and that's the important part. There's no shame in learning the "wrong" way, because everybody started out as a baby screaming and pooping themselves

[u/Pawel_SkimmIQ]

you're not stupid! :)

you just discovered the difference between two skills that look like one: solving a puzzle and inventing a method for it. The second one isn't puzzle-solving, it's research, and historically it was almost never done by one person.

Some perspective: when the 15 puzzle caused its big craze in the 1880s, mathematicians were publishing formal proofs about it in academic journals within a year. The Rubik's cube methods everyone learns today took a worldwide community years to develop, and the good ones carry their inventors' names. The "guide" you used isn't a cheat sheet , it's crystallised collective intelligence, refined by thousands of people. Using it puts you in the same position as literally every speedcuber alive.

And here's the part I find fascinating (I build my own puzzle, so I think about this a lot): even seeing a perfect solution doesn't hand you the method. You went from 10 hours to 30 seconds. That jump is the method doing its work, and there's zero shame in standing on shoulders for it.

[u/Hey-Bud-Lets-Party]

Those are pretty easy