In Ice Sliding Maze, every arrow input commits to a complete straight-line slide — there is no way to stop the puck in the middle of a slide. The puck only halts when the next step would leave the seven-by-seven board or land on a blocked cell; releasing the key early, tapping twice to brake, or pausing on an open tile is not part of the rule set. This single decision transforms what looks like a simple maze into a route-planning puzzle: you must think one move ahead to an actual stopping square, then plan the next slide from there. The Ice Sliding Maze tool bakes this rule into every one of its five rinks, so understanding the full-line mechanic is the first step toward the exact 1,000-point total the game awards.
What Happens When You Press an Arrow Key
When you fire an arrow key or tap a direction on the touch pad, the puck begins moving in that direction and keeps moving until something forces it to stop. Three situations end a slide: a solid dark block sits directly ahead, the edge of the seven-by-seven board would be crossed on the next step, or the puck is already pressed against a wall and cannot move at all. Each of these is the only kind of stop the game recognizes, and there is no fourth option that lets you brake on a free tile.
A slide that bumps into a wall or boundary at zero displacement is an atomic no-op: it does not add to the move counter, it does not mark the most recent path, and it does not create a false failure. In other words, pressing Right when the puck is jammed against the right edge is a silently ignored input. The puck stays where it is, the telemetry panel holds steady, and the game waits for your next real decision.
This is exactly why you cannot brake halfway across a row of open squares, and why you cannot aim for "about three tiles over." Every slide picks one of the reachable stopping squares and that square becomes your new origin. Choosing the next slide means picking from those exact positions, not from a continuous range of tiles along the slide path.
Why Crossing STOP Mid-Slide Does Not Clear the Rink
The destination is a stop-state target, not a passing-through marker. The STOP square only counts when the puck rests on it at the end of a complete slide. If you start on the left side of a rink and slide right, and the puck passes over STOP during that slide but continues onward to a wall, the rink stays open — you have crossed the goal, not finished on it.
This distinction catches most new players. You may see the puck glide over the outlined STOP label and assume the level is solved, then watch the puck keep moving to the right edge. The level only completes when the final position of the slide equals the goal square. From that moment on, scoring kicks in: the cleared rink adds exactly 200 points to your run, the level moves counter resets for the next layout, and the next rink in the fixed sequence loads.
Plan a Complete Run Through the Five Rinks
- Open the first rink and identify the puck's starting square, the solid dark blocks around it, and the outlined STOP square. Note any cracked squares (drawn with a visible cross) so you know which stopping points will reset the puck.
- Decide which direction would send the puck toward a useful stopping square, then check whether that slide would end on STOP. If yes, take it — the rink clears, you earn 200 points, and the next rink loads.
- If the direct route does not end on STOP, plan two slides ahead: pick a stopping square that creates a new angle to the destination. Each arrow input changes the set of legal next slides because the puck's origin has moved.
- Avoid cracked stops unless you are using them intentionally for practice. The first cracked stop of a given signature resets the puck to the start of that rink; a second unique cracked signature closes the entire run until Restart.
- After the fifth rink clears, gameplay freezes — the score at that point is exactly 1,000 (5 cleared rinks × 200 points = 1,000). Extra input cannot change the final number.
The Five Rinks and Their Verified Shortest Routes
The five rinks ship in a fixed order and their walls, cracks, and goals are the same on every load. Each shortest route was checked by a separate breadth-first search over stop states, so the move counts below are not estimates — they are proven minima derived from an oracle that builds the graph from literal wall coordinates.
| Rink | Order | Verified minimum moves | Points when cleared |
|---|---|---|---|
| Split Shelf | 1 | 3 | 200 |
| Cold Stair | 2 | 4 | 200 |
| Blue Switchback | 3 | 5 | 200 |
| Frost Relay | 4 | 6 | 200 |
| Long Thaw | 5 | 7 | 200 |
The 200-points-per-clear formula holds across every rink because the score is computed strictly from cleared rinks, not from the number of slides you commit along the way. Going around in circles on a single rink still ends the same way: 200 points the moment you finally land on STOP, then the next rink.
Cracked Stops: How Traps and Mistakes Work
Each rink contains one or two cracked squares drawn with a visible cross. Landing on a crack resets the puck to that rink's starting position; the rink stays open, your run continues, and the crack counter on the telemetry panel increments by one. The game tracks crack signatures as a combination of the level number and the cracked stop coordinate, so repeating the same crack does not add another mistake.
Hitting a second distinct crack, however, closes the run until you press Restart. This makes the second-crack rule the practical end of a session, similar in spirit to the freeze that happens after the fifth rink clears. Until you restart, extra inputs cannot change the final score, and the run stays locked at whatever value the run had reached.
Passing across a crack on a longer slide is harmless: the puck only counts the cracked stop if it actually rests there. A slide that crosses a cracked square and continues to a wall produces no penalty, because the puck never rested on the cracked tile as its final state.
Plan Beyond the Next Slide: The Split Shelf Example
The first rink, Split Shelf, illustrates why planning one slide ahead is not enough. The puck begins on the same bottom row as the STOP square, which tempts new players into sliding directly right. That slide ends on a cracked square, not on STOP, so it resets the rink rather than clearing it.
A different up-then-right sequence also stops on a cracked square — and that error route shares no stops with the winning route, so it is independently reachable. The verified three-move winning route, by contrast, travels up, then left, then down. The goal is reached not by approaching it from the same row but by using the walls as launch points that rotate the puck's facing direction. In every rink the same logic applies: list the squares the puck can actually stop on from its current position, eliminate the cracked ones, and search for a sequence of slides whose final stop equals STOP. The shortest such sequence is the verified minimum.
Controls, Telemetry, and the Boundary No-Op
The puck is labeled ICE, the goal is outlined and labeled STOP, the most recent traversed cells receive a restrained accent, and the cracked squares carry a cross. Below the play area the telemetry panel reports cleared rinks, total committed slides, the current row and column, level moves, and crack count. These numbers update on every slide that actually moves the puck and stay frozen across no-op inputs.
Keyboard players can use the four arrow keys anywhere on the page; touch and pointer players receive a four-button direction pad with at least 44 pixels of height per control. Both input paths feed the same reducer, so the stopping, scoring, crack, and terminal rules are identical regardless of how you play. Once the fifth rink is complete or the second distinct crack has been reached, gameplay freezes until Restart — extra events cannot alter the final state, and the score you see is the score you keep.
Where the Rule Comes From
The full-line movement rule is the defining mechanic of the game and the reason it reads as a route-planning puzzle rather than a reflex challenge. Because the puck can stop only on walls, blocks, and the board boundary, every legal position is a stop-state node, and every arrow input creates an edge from one node to the next. The breadth-first search oracle that verifies the five routes reconstructs this graph from the literal wall coordinates of each rink and confirms both solvability and minimum-move accuracy. The oracle implements its own slide loop rather than calling the production movement function, so agreement between the two is meaningful rather than circular.
This is a discrete recreational puzzle, not a simulation of friction, momentum, acceleration, temperature, or real ice, and it does not estimate travel time or physical distance. The product value comes from transparent movement rules, deliberately authored route geometry, the 5 × 200 = 1,000 scoring progression, and an auditable solver that checks the same five layouts you play. Player input stays in your browser, no account is required, and no network gameplay service is called. The route you plan is the route the puzzle accepts, and the exact 1,000-point total is the route's final result.
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