Crates

Expert Crates floors

Expert floors are 5 by 5: twenty-four crates, shuffled all through. The same method works, three rows and three columns before the last three crates go round, but it's over two hundred moves, and a fast one takes practice.

Practice gives you floors you haven't solved yet, as many as you like, and keeps your best time without hints. Every floor can be put in order, and the hints teach the method people use by hand.

How to play Crates

1. The floor is packed with numbered crates and one empty spot. A crate next to the empty spot can slide into it.
2. Tap a crate in the same row or column as the empty spot to push it there, with every crate in between: each crate that moves is a move.
3. Put the crates in order: 1 at the top left, reading across row by row like a book, with the empty spot in the bottom right corner.

Tap a crate to push it, or swipe the way you want a crate to go: the one next to the empty spot slides in. On a computer, the arrow keys do the same. Undo has no limit, and Ctrl+Z takes a move back. Every floor can be solved, and you're ranked by time.

Solving tips

• One row at a time. Finish the top row, then the left column, and you're left with a smaller floor to solve the same way. Never break a finished row to fix a later one.
• The last two go in together. The last two crates of a row can't go in one after the other. Put the first of them in the corner spot with the second under it, then bring the empty spot round and turn them both in.
• Go round in loops. The last few crates are solved by turning them round a small loop, like a carousel, until each one drops into place.
• Stuck? A hint shows the next push of that same method, with the spot the crate is headed for, so you can follow along and learn it.