math behind a puzzle

Hi all,
While this is not strictly programming, I wonder if anyone can point
me to a place where I can find out about a general solution to a
puzzle. The puzzle is simply eight tiles, each of which can be slid
up, down, left, or right. They are numbered 1-8 and are on a grid with
9 squares, so one square is empty to let the pieces slide. There has
to be a mathematical way of figuring out (A) how many moves would be
required to solve this and (B) what those moves are.
Again, this is not programming, but I suspect that I will eventually
run into something like it on http://www.projecteuler.net...

-- 
Have a great day,
Alex (msg sent from GMail website)
mehgcap@xxxxxxxxx; http://www.facebook.com/mehgcap
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