Sliding puzzles or sliding block puzzles ask the player to slide tokens (usually flat shapes) along certain given routes (usually on a board) to establish a certain given end-configuration.
Usually the tokens differ by colour and/or carry an image, number or letter.

We will call sliding puzzles only those puzzles that are essentially two-dimensional in nature, even if this sliding is facilitated by mechanically interlinked pieces (like partially encaged marbles) or three-dimensional tokens.

Examples of sliding puzzles

See also : shuffling puzzles