Who invented Huarong Road?

Huarong Road game belongs to the slider game, which is to move something called "block" within a certain range according to certain conditions and finally meet certain requirements. The origin of the slider game can be said to be the "Nine Palace Rearrangement" in ancient China. It should have been produced in the era when the book of Hutuluo appeared, with a history of thousands of years. 1865, the game of "Rescheduling Fifteen" appeared in the west, especially the game of "14- 15" introduced by Sam Lloyd in 1878, which was very popular. Since then, various slider games have emerged. The pennant game was invented by L.W.Hardy and patented in 1909. Later, the game of fierce horse with red mane appeared in France. It is conceivable that this game spread to China and became a Huarong Road game.

The earliest person who systematically studied the game of Huarong Road was Mr. Xu Fufang, a professor of mathematics at Suzhou University. 1952 He made a detailed analysis of the game in "Random Talks on Mathematics" and summed up eight laws. These eight articles can be summarized as the following four points:

1, four soldiers must be paired together and cannot be separated;

2, Cao Cao, Guan Yu, when the general moves, there must be two small soldiers in front to clear the way;

3. When Cao Cao acts, there must be two small soldiers chasing behind him;

4. In the following three cases, each block can be moved locally at will (without prejudice to other places).

On this basis, Xu Chunfang proposed a 100 step solution. Here is xu teacher's solution. Perhaps because of the different initial conditions, only 98 steps are needed here.

Later, Thomas B.Lenann, an American lawyer, found a new solution, which was published by Gardner in the March issue of Scientific American 1964. It has 8 1 steps and is called Gardner solution.

Huarong Road in the game has different openings. According to the method of placing five rectangular blocks, it is impossible to place all five vertically, but there are also one horizontal, two horizontal, three horizontal, four horizontal and five horizontal.