Sokoban has exactly one mechanic — push a crate one square — and that single constraint generates every puzzle. The crates only ever move away from you, so every push is permanent and every mistake is a wall you built yourself.

Think from the target square

Beginners ask "how do I push this crate?" Strong players ask the reverse question: "which side must I be standing on for the final push?"

For a crate to land on a target moving right, you must be to its left. Work backwards: where must the crate be one push before the target? Two pushes before? The route from start to finish is then built from the end, and each push along it is safe by construction.

Planning forward means discovering your mistakes after you have made them. Planning backwards means never making them.

Learn to see dead squares

A dead square is any square from which a crate can never reach a target. The classics:

  • Corners: a crate pushed into a corner can never move again.
  • Walls with no target: a crate flat against a wall that contains no target can only slide along that wall, never off it.
  • Two crates side by side against a wall: neither can ever be pushed again.

Before your first push in any room, mentally mark these squares and simply never push a crate onto one. An amazing number of "impossible" rooms become routine once dead squares are off the menu.

Push order beats push skill

Most rooms have a natural order forced by geometry: crates nearest walls and corners go first, because every crate you leave behind becomes an obstacle for the rest. A useful scan:

  1. Which crates are already boxed in by walls? They must be solved before anything can pass near them.
  2. Which crate, if pushed now, opens space for the others? That is usually move one.
  3. Which crates should not be touched at all yet? Park nothing in the middle of the room — the middle is the highway.

Undo is a tool, not a defeat

The undo button turns Sokoban from a punishment into a laboratory. Use it the moment a position looks worse than the plan predicted — do not push on hoping the room will forgive you. It will not.

Sokoban rooms never get harder mid-room. They were impossible or solvable the moment you saw them; your only job is to find out which, without spending your crates to learn it.

A five-room warm-up routine

With five hand-built rooms of increasing tightness, use the first room as a calibration drill: solve it once planning backwards from every crate. It feels slow. It is how the habit gets installed — and the habit is the whole game.