Sliding Tile Puzzles

Even though there are hundreds of web sites which contain sliding block puzzles, almost all of them use unit squares confined to rectangular fields. All such puzzles are essentually equivalent to Sam Loyd's infamous 14-15 puzzle (15 squares in a 4 by 4 grid.) However, sliding block puzzles for which the pieces are NOT squares introduce a whole new challenge. Below are some famous puzzles which you can try your hand at. For an extra challenge, try to solve the puzzle using the fewest number of moves. (Moving the same piece twice counts as one move.)