Wagon Yard is a fenced stockyard at golden hour, six tiles by six, packed nose to tail with freight wagons, hay carts and ox teams. Your red wagon is boxed in somewhere along the third row, and the gate in the right-hand fence stands open. Shunt everything else out of the way and roll it out — in as few moves as you can. There's no luck in it, and every yard can be got out of.
The rules
Every piece lies on its own straight track and can only roll along it. A piece lying across the yard slides left and right; one lying along it slides up and down. It goes until it meets another piece or the fence, and never further.
- Wagons and hay carts are two tiles long. Ox teams (two oxen, a yoke and the cart behind them) are three.
- Nothing turns, nothing lifts, and nothing passes through anything else.
- Your wagon lies across the third row, the row the gate is on. The yard is solved the moment it reaches the gate: it rolls out in a trail of dust and the result card comes up.
The only way out is along the gate row, so the puzzle is about the pieces standing across that row between your wagon and the gate — and then about whatever is stopping them from moving out of the way.
Moving the pieces
- Drag a piece along its track. It follows your finger as far as it can go and settles on the nearest tile when you let go.
- Tap a piece to nudge it one tile toward its open side. If it can go either way, it goes toward the half of the piece you tapped.
- Undo takes the last move back; Reset puts the yard back as it was dealt. Both are always there.
On a keyboard: Tab picks a piece (your wagon first) and Shift+Tab goes back, the arrows slide it one tile, Shift+an arrow slides it as far as it will go, Z or Backspace undoes, H asks for a hint and Esc lets go of the piece.
Moves, par and stars
One slide of one piece is one move, however far it goes: drag a wagon one tile or four and it's still one. Two slides of the same piece in a row count as one move too, because a single slide could have done both — so nudging a piece along with taps costs you nothing. Sliding a piece straight back to where it started that move isn't a move at all. Undo takes a move off the count; Reset puts it back to nothing.
Every yard has a par, shown beside your count as you play (Moves 7 · par 14). Par is not a guess or a target someone set: before a yard is ever dealt, a program searches every position it can reach, breadth first, and par is the true fewest moves out. A second solver, built separately, has to agree with it. Nobody can finish under par, so par is the perfect solve.
The leaderboards rank moves over par, so a 0 is the best there is and yards of different depths still compare fairly. The clock runs while you play and the card shows your time, but nothing is ranked by it.
Hints
Free play gives you three hints a yard. A hint only points; it never moves anything for you. It rings the piece to move next on a shortest way out from the yard as it stands now and shows a dashed ghost where that piece should go. Your next move clears it. A hinted solve posts nothing to the leaderboards and doesn't count for the clean badges or skins. The Daily has no hints at all.
The levels
The levels are set by par, the length of the shortest way out, and by how crowded the yard is:
Easy — clear the row
Six to nine pieces, and a way out you can usually see from the start: move what's across the gate row, then move what's in the way of that.
Medium — the obvious move is wrong
From Medium up, every yard has a trap. The blocker sitting nearest the gate in your wagon's row — the one you want to move first — is never the right first move. Either it can't move yet, or every way it can slide leaves you no nearer the gate. Something else has to shift first.
Hard and Expert — the long shunt
Yards where the way out runs to twenty, thirty, thirty-five moves, and pieces have to go back and forth to let each other past. They're rare: a random yard reaches par 19 about one time in forty and par 33 about one in a thousand, so these are a fixed set built in advance by a long search: 280 Hard yards and 99 Expert ones, every one checked again when it loads.
The Daily
Every day there is one new yard, a Medium, the same for everybody in the world, turning over at midnight UTC. There's no countdown: take as long as you like. It's the moves that count, and the result card offers a share with your moves, par and a star bar. Solve it when you're signed in and your moves over par go on the Daily's leaderboard (and on the Medium one). Solve it on consecutive days to build a daily streak.
Free play deals a new yard at the level you choose whenever you like. Every free-play yard has a number. Finish one short of three stars and the card offers Replay Yard #N, the same yard again. Here, going back to a yard you've already solved is how you get it down to par.
Skins
The yard can wear six looks. Your wagon stays red in every one of them, so it's never hard to find. One look is yours from the start; the other five are earned by playing, never bought. Each is shown in the settings with the feat it takes and how far along you are. Signed in, they follow your account to any device.
- Dust & Timber The house look: warm dust, split-rail fence, sun through the gate. Free.
- Red Barn Solve 10 yards — any level, free play or the Daily.
- Moonlit Yard Solve a Medium or harder yard with no Undo, no Reset and no hint.
- Canyon Clay Solve a Hard yard.
- Harvest Gold Solve the Daily seven days running.
- Silver Spur Clockwork: solve a Hard yard at par with no hint.
Achievements
Signed in, Wagon Yard keeps eight badges for the game and five for its Daily:
- Out the Gate — get your wagon out. Ten Yards — solve ten. Yard Boss — solve a hundred.
- No Second Thoughts — a Medium or harder yard with no Undo, no Reset and no hint. At Par — a Medium at par, three stars, no hint.
- Tight Squeeze — a Hard. Clockwork — a Hard at par with no hint. The Deep One — an Expert (par 33 or more).
- The Daily: First Haul, Three Stars (a Daily at par), Week in the Yard, Month in the Yard and Yard Regular (25 Dailies solved).
Tips
Work backwards from the gate
Look at the gate row first. Every piece standing across it between your wagon and the gate has to leave the row, and each has only two ways to go: up or down. Ask which way each one can clear the row, then what's in its way. The puzzle is that chain of blockers.
Count the room
The gate row has two rows above it and three below. A wagon standing across it can clear the row either way, into the top two rows or down into the bottom three. An ox team can only go down: three tiles long, it can't fit in the two rows above. So an ox team in the gate row tells you at once that the bottom of its column has to be emptied, and that shows you which pieces must move first.
Distrust the first move
On a Medium or harder yard, the blocker nearest the gate is the one move that's never right first. Look one piece further away.
Slide all the way, or exactly enough
A long slide costs no more than a short one, so a piece pushed hard against the fence is usually out of everybody's way. But a piece stopped one tile short sometimes leaves exactly the gap another piece needs to pass. When a yard stalls, that's the place to look.
Undo is free — use it to explore
Undo and Reset never cost you a move. Try a line of shunts, see where it leads, and take it back. Only the clean badges care, and you can go for those once you know the way out.
Where it comes from
Wagon Yard is a sliding-block escape puzzle, the family best known from the traffic-jam puzzles where a car has to be got out of a crowded car park. Its yards are generated rather than drawn by hand. Each is solved completely, position by position, before you see it, which is what makes par exact. This one swaps the car park for a stockyard and the cars for wagons and oxen.
Good to know
- Easy, Medium and the Daily are built on your device from a seed; Hard and Expert come with the page. There's nothing to download, and the Daily works offline once the page has loaded.
- Your yards in progress, your settings, your skins and your streak are kept on your device. Signing in adds the Wagon Yard leaderboards and badges, and carries your skins to other devices. It's never required.
- Every yard can be solved. If you're stuck, Reset costs nothing; in free play, so does a hint, except to the clean badges.