Dear,
Seems like school assignment. I have good programming skills especially in Java. And these little school assignments are not a problem for me. I will also help you in understanding codes. In case if you are interested. Help will be in form of meaningful variable names, consistent programming style, clear comments in code and few of your queries.(obviously not going to teach you from a to z).
By the way I have recently implemented 8 puzzle using heuristic approach.(number of misplaced tiles, shortest path to goal).I will send it to you if you want to see.