Plank Puzzle — Starter

How to Start

You need to cross a swamp with dangerous crocodiles living there but with old tree stumps dotted across the swamp. There are also three light, wooden planks. The stumps are too far apart to jump across, you would probably fall in, but if you stand on a stump, you can pick up a plank and put it down between nearby stumps, as long as they are exactly the right distance apart.

Crossing planks over one another could cause problems as would laying them over intervening stumps. You can only carry one plank at a time and you can only move a plank which you can physically reach from where you are standing (highlighted in yellow). Brown planks are out of reach.
Simply click on or tap the highlighted plank to pick it up and click/tap where you would like to place it. That counts as one move as shown on the counter at the bottom.

History

Andrea Gilbert came up with idea of Plank Puzzles in 2000/2001. The puzzles have not become widely known and I would like more people to discover them. For more about the clever plank puzzles, do go to Andrea’s clickmazes website, https://clickmazes.com

This is actually the very first puzzle than Andrea created so it’s a good one to start with. It is included here with her permission. The puzzle has a 16-move solution and this diagram may help you to work out the route. It shows all 21 positions where the three planks can be laid across the stumps.