Oskar's Harbour Puzzle (java) - impossible?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve been working on this puzzle for a while now, and I’ve convinced myself intuitively that there is no solution. I’ve gotten to the point where all but two of the crates are on the boat. Somehow it seems unlikely that someone would go to the trouble of designing this as essentially an elaborate prank. (“Ha! You could literally work on this forever and not be able to solve it!”) Can someone provide either a solution or a rigorous proof that there is none? If it is solvable, I would really like gradual hints, rather than just a solution, if possible.

Of course, spoiler boxes would be appreciated. (Type (spoiler)the solution/hint here(/spoiler) but use [square brackets] instead of (round ones))

2

How do you get the crane to drop the cargo and go back?

3

You don’t. There can never be any empty space under a crane. You have to bring a smaller crane next to it so that it carries the smaller crane back with it, instead of the cargo. Problem is, the smaller cranes can get blocked from use by big stacks of cargo. I hope that made sense.

4

It’s do-able. I didn’t keep track of the moves though – I was just sort of blindly clicking things. But at least you know it’s possible…

5

I can only get the tallest and next tallest cranes onto the ship.

6

Gah! Now I’ve done it, but, like you, I have no idea how! I suppose I’ll need a pad of paper…

7

I did it. Not too sure how exactly.

Strange puzzle. When I am more awake I’ll try it again and write down the moves.

Slee

8

Here you go.

Warning - all I did was take screen captures at each step and shoved them into a word doc. It’s about a 1.6 MB file.

http://userweb.suscom.net/~sokosfamily/puzzle.doc

It’s nowhere near the best way of solving it but at least its a solution.

9

I disagree. You hit on the key:

you take the three-high containers back onto the dock for a while

10

…engineer_comp_geek, you are an engineering computer geek! :wink: Thanks for the solution, it was driving me mad!!! :smiley: