Color Sort

How to play

1. Tap a tube to pick up the balls on top. All the same-colored balls on top come up together.
2. Tap another tube to pour them in. They can go into an empty tube, or onto a ball of the same color, as many as fit (4 balls fill a tube).
3. Finish when every tube holds one color. Full tubes get a lid and a chime.

You get 5 undos per puzzle, one extra empty tube if you need it, and as many hints as you like. Restart puts everything back, undos included. Your level and your best scores stay on this device.

Tips for sorting faster

• Keep an empty tube free for as long as you can. It's your workspace, and filling both empties with odd balls is the usual way to get stuck.
• Start with colors that are nearly on top. If three of a color are near the top of different tubes, gather those first.
• Look before you pour into an empty tube. The best color to start a new tube with is one whose last balls you can reach soon.
• Par is the number to beat. It's the shortest solution our solver found. Matching it is great; on the biggest levels it's sometimes beatable.

The daily puzzle

Everyone gets the same daily puzzle, a new one each day at midnight on your device. Solve it, then share the link: it opens the same puzzle with your move count to beat. Solve it on consecutive days to build a streak.

Questions

Is it really free, with no ads?

Yes. There are no ads, no accounts, no in-app purchases and nothing to download. The page loads nothing from any other website, so there's nothing tracking you either.

Is every level solvable?

Yes. Each level is shuffled from a fixed seed, then a solver built into the page plays it to the end before you see it. A shuffle the solver can't finish is thrown away and the next one is tried. Level 12 is the same puzzle on every device, so you can compare scores with friends.

How do hints work?

The same solver looks at the tubes as they are now and shows the first move of a way to finish. If you've reached a dead end, where no sequence of moves can finish the puzzle, it says so and tells you how many undos get you back on track, or whether the extra tube would help.

I'm color-blind. Can I play?

Yes. Every color also has its own symbol (heart, square, star and so on), so you can sort by shape alone. The colors were chosen to stay apart under the common kinds of color blindness, and the screen reader names each ball by color and symbol.

Is this the same as other ball sort and water sort games?

It's the same kind of puzzle. Like water sort, the matching balls on top pour together, as many as fit, so you never have to carry them across one at a time. What's different here: there are no ads, every level is checked solvable before you see it, and every color has a symbol for color-blind players.

What is saved, and where?

Your current level, any puzzle you're in the middle of (yours, today's daily and the last one you opened from a link), best move counts, daily results and the sound, symbol and vibration settings are kept in this browser's local storage, on your device. Nothing is sent anywhere. Clearing this site's data in your browser removes it. See the privacy policy.

Why is there no sound, or no vibration?

Browsers only play sound after your first tap. On an iPhone the sounds follow the silent switch, so switch it off to hear them; we also ask the browser to let music or podcasts from other apps keep playing. Vibration works on Android phones in Chrome and similar browsers; iPhones don't let websites vibrate. All the sounds are synthesized live on your device; there are no recordings.