Parker

Parker is a parking‑jam puzzle to be untangled. On a six-by-six grid, colored blocks are stuck against one another, and one of them, the red block, must exit through the single gap in the right wall. Each block is confined to an axis: lying down it only moves left and right, standing it only moves up and down. Nothing rotates, nothing jumps. You grab a block with a tap, designate the target square, and it slides there if the path is clear. The top bar holds three counters: moves played, time, and two values specific to the day's board, the par and the perfect, the latter being the absolute minimum computed by exhaustive search.

1. Press Start, then locate the red block and the gap in the right wall it must reach.
2. Tap a block to pick it up, then tap the square where you want to send it. It will slide there if the way is clear.
3. Clear the red block's path by pushing away what blocks it, knowing that a slide counts as one move regardless of the distance traveled.
4. Get the red block out. In case of a dead end, Restart board replaces everything and resets the move count to zero, the Hint button remains available, and Give up closes the day.

The sliding parking-jam is a pocket classic, and Parker gives it what it was missing: a truth. Because each board is solved by exhaustive search before being served, the number shown next to yours is not an estimate but the absolute minimum, and the score reads as a gap measured against that reference. The lack of undo completely changes how you play, since you can no longer grope around hoping to return: you plan, or you start over with the clock that did not wait. The single hint, offered in the very first game and never again, completes what the game expects of you, and Sunday promises a jam much thicker than the weekday one.

The game never tells you whether a move is good; it charges you for it. The two counters in the bar, moves and time, are the only permanent feedback, and the clock runs from the moment the board opens, even before the first move, ticking while the move counter is still at zero. The verdict is the score announced by the rules: ten points for a perfect run, one point less for every two additional actions, with a floor at one point, and the principle that finishing is always better than giving up. The par and the perfect displayed at the top are not decorative; they are calculated by exhaustive search on the day's board.

Daily Jam

A numbered, dated board, one per day, with its own par and perfect.

Sunday

The rules say the jam is noticeably longer on Sunday.

• The game itself gives the correct method and it is worth following: start from the exit lane and work backwards, clearing first what blocks the red block's route, then what blocks those blocks.
• A slide costs one move, whatever the distance. Sending a block to the end of its lane doesn't cost more than moving it one square, and it often frees two passages at once.
• There is no undo. Restart puts the blocks back and resets the moves to zero, but the clock does not restart: it's better to think standing in front of the board than to correct afterward.
• The free hint is offered only once, in the very first game, and it merely names the block to move next: save it for a real blockage, not a lazy start.