4x4 Sliding Puzzle Solver
Numbers or pictures: enter your 4x4 board and get the shortest solution, step by step.
Solve any 4x4 slide puzzle
This 4x4 sliding puzzle solver works with number boards and picture boards alike. Upload your own image or start with the sample picture, set up your scrambled board, and press Solve. It is the 4x4 version of our sliding puzzle solver.
The solver gives you a quick solution right away and then keeps searching until it finds the shortest solution for your board. When the badge reads Optimal, no shorter answer exists.
Turn any picture into a 4x4 puzzle
Picture puzzles are the most common kind of 4x4 slide puzzle. They show up in phone games, puzzle apps, escape rooms and as photo gifts. To solve one:
- Upload the finished picture. Use a file, drag and drop, paste from your clipboard, or an image URL. The image is cropped to a square and cut into 16 pieces, and it never leaves your device.
- Show the numbers. Turn on Show numbers and every piece gets its number. Piece 1 is the top-left corner of the finished image, piece 4 the top-right, and piece 15 sits next to the empty bottom-right corner.
- Copy your scramble. Press Edit start and swap pieces until the board looks exactly like the puzzle in front of you.
- Solve and follow. Play the moves back slowly and repeat each slide on your own puzzle.
Don't have a picture handy? Press Try a sample picture.
What makes a 4x4 puzzle hard?
A 4x4 board has 15 pieces and over ten trillion solvable positions, so nobody can memorize the answers the way you almost can on a 3x3. Moves are counted as single-tile slides (one tile moving into the empty space), the standard way optimal solutions are measured. A typical scramble needs around 50 moves when solved perfectly, and a person working by hand usually needs two or three times as many. Picture boards feel even harder, because pieces of sky or background look alike and are easy to put in the wrong place.
The rarest, hardest boards are the 80-move positions of the classic 15-puzzle. How long they take and why is explained on the 15 Puzzle Solver page.
If the solver tells you your board is not solvable, two pieces were almost certainly entered in each other's place. Look for two neighboring pieces that look similar, or press Fix it.
Numbers instead of a picture?
If you're working on the classic numbered 4x4 board, the famous 15-puzzle, our 15 Puzzle Solver covers its history, the rule that decides which boards can be solved, and Sam Loyd's impossible 14-15 puzzle.
Frequently asked questions
How do I enter a 4x4 picture puzzle?
Upload the finished picture (or try the sample), turn on Show numbers, then press Edit start and swap tiles until the board looks like your scrambled puzzle. Tile 1 is the top-left piece of the finished image and the numbers run left to right, top to bottom.
How long does it take to solve a 4x4 puzzle?
A first solution appears almost instantly. The solver then searches for the shortest one, and for almost every board it finds it within a second or two and marks it Optimal. A few extremely hard boards take much longer. The solver shows its progress, and you can stop at any time and keep the quick solution.