Tools / Game Room · Arcade · Sliding Puzzle
👣 The Seventeen Steps
🩺 A Dr. John Watson tool — Chronicler, physician, first reader
Watson climbed the seventeen steps to 221B hundreds of times and never counted them; Holmes counted. Prove which of the two you are: a photograph of Baker Street by gaslight is shuffled into fifteen sliding tiles, and every slide either restores the street or deepens the muddle. Fewest moves wins — your best is remembered.
✅ Free to use — no account, nothing to configure.
What it does
A real photograph
The tiles are cut from the site's gaslit Baker Street scene — watch the street reassemble as you work.
Always solvable
The board is shuffled by legal moves only, so every deal can be restored. No impossible permutations, ever.
Moves and time
Both are counted; fewest moves is the record that sticks. Keyboard arrows work too.
How to use it
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1
Click a tile next to the gap (or use arrow keys) to slide it.
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2
Rebuild the photograph, corner to corner.
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3
Beat your fewest-moves record.
Named for the seventeen steps from the hall to the sitting room of 221B — the canon's first lesson in seeing versus observing.