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The game is solvable -- no tricks, just something you've overlooked.

(Hint: Someone who doesn't know about parity might try scrambling the puzzle randomly, then find that they can reach the goal state about half of the time.)

That was fun. My usual technique of making a "train" of letters to slide and then attach a caboose didn't work. So I flipped my phone upside down and acted like I wanted to make the word WON at the top. I did then did the rest of th puzzle, finding out the difference from a normal 15 puzzle along the way.

Is the thing I've overlooked that there are two As?

Yes - easily solvable when you flip the A's

I wanted to win, so I just changed the goal to P,L,A,Y,T,H,I,S,G,A,M,E,W,O,N, which is solvable ;)

It's a proof of concept I imagine

I did the same ;-)

I just found this article on the solvability of these puzzles: https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~mdr/teaching/modules04/java2/Tile...