questions regarding the use of A* with the 15-square puzzle

Question

I\'m trying to build an A* solver for a 15-square puzzle.

The goal is to re-arrange the tiles so that they appear in their natural positions. You can only sli

Answer 1

Yes, that's how I've heard of this problem being done. g(x) is the number of tile slides that have taken place, and h(x) is the total distance that all tiles are from their required squares. I hadn't seen anything used but this approach (the Manhattan heuristic) before today, but just found this so-called diagonal shortcut -- you might want to check it out.