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It feels like there should be some area of math that can be used to make sequential movement puzzles like the 15-puzzle or Sokoban puzzles easier to solve. I guess for symmetrical examples like the 15-puzzle group theory can be helpful, but what about things like Sokoban where there isn't any obvious symmetry. Is it really just a matter of search algorithms and heuristics, or are there tools that can be used to simplify such problems?

Jeff Bass
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    Sokoban and many puzzles like it are NP complete, so they are (likely) inherently hard, meaning no such simplifying theories should exist. – Mike Earnest Oct 31 '21 at 00:47

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