Toybox Bolts

What is Toybox Bolts?

Toybox Bolts is our take on the screw sort puzzle. Each level is a tin toybox with a stack of bright plates inside: bars, discs, stars, L shapes and rounded tags, all printed with stripes, dots, checks and little stars. Every plate is held down by colored bolts. Take out a plate's last bolt and it drops away with a tin clang, and the plates under it come into view.

At the very bottom of every box a folded wind-up toy is asleep. Clear the last plate and it pops up, walks a few steps and hops onto your toy shelf. There are 60 toys to find across the levels, from a tin robot and a wind-up duck to a clockwork mouse and a moon rocket.

There's no clock and no lives, and a level usually takes a minute or two. It's free and runs in the browser on a phone, tablet or computer, with nothing to download. Every bolt color has its own stamped shape too (circle, square, triangle, star, heart, drop, leaf and moon), so you never have to tell colors apart by color alone.

If you like puzzles where everything has its place, our sort puzzle games page has more.

How to play

Tap a bolt to unscrew it. A bolt is free when no plate above it covers its head. It spins out and flies to the open color box that matches it. Each box has three holes, and when it fills, the lid snaps shut and the box slides away. The next box in line slides in, and you can always see the next three box colors beside the open ones.

Two color boxes are open at a time. If neither matches the bolt you tap, the bolt goes to the bench, a tray with five spare holes. When a box of its color arrives, bench bolts of that color hop in by themselves, left to right. If the bench is full and no free bolt has anywhere to go, you're stuck, and we'll offer you a calm way out.

Swinging plates

From level 12, plates can swing. A plate held by just one bolt turns around that bolt like a pendulum and settles hanging straight down. That swing can uncover bolts that were hidden, or cover new ones. The bolt a plate is hanging from glows gold, so you can see which one is holding it. Choosing which bolt to leave last on each plate is the real puzzle.

Stars

Stars come from how full your bench gets. Keep it at three bolts or fewer for the whole level and you earn three stars. Four at most is two stars, and any clear earns one. A little star meter next to the bench shows where you stand as you play.

Controls

• Phone and tablet: tap a bolt. Tap the dashed sixth bench hole to use an Extra hole.
• Mouse: click a bolt.
• Keyboard: arrow keys or Tab move the focus ring between bolts, Enter or Space unscrews it, U puts the last bolt back, H shows a hint and Esc pauses.

The rooms

The levels run through six rooms of a toy workshop, and each one brings a new rule. Every new rule starts with a gentle intro level, and a level marked Tricky is always followed by an easier one.

Boards grow from 9 bolts in three colors on level 1 to about 30 bolts in up to eight colors near the end.

Helpers

You get one free Put back in every level. It returns your last bolt and undoes any swing it caused. Other helpers are earned, never bought, and only used when you tap them:

• Put back: more undos after the free one.
• Extra hole: a sixth bench hole for this level.
• Screwdriver: take out any one bolt, even a covered or padlocked one.
• X-ray: see through every plate for your next three taps.
• Hint: lights up a good next bolt.

Restarting a level is always free. You earn helpers from Today's goals (three a day, each pays one helper once), from a star gift every 25 stars (one of every helper) and from the weekly Big Build.

Daily Toybox and leaderboards

The Daily Toybox is the same box for everyone on the same day (UTC). Your first finished run is the one that counts. Replays are practice and never change your score or streak.

A typical daily has around 27 bolts, so a clean, quick run with a low bench lands a little over 2,000. Your clock only runs while you play, and it keeps running if you restart your counted box. The daily streak has one free rest day each week: miss a single day and the streak bends instead of breaking. There's also an all-time board for total stars across all the levels.

The toy shelf and the Big Build

Ten toys hide in each room. When you open a toy's level, it walks onto your shelf, and three stars on that level makes it shiny. Tap any toy on the shelf to wind it up and watch it walk.

Every Monday (UTC) a new Big Build opens: an extra tall toybox shaped like a tin carousel, a jack-in-the-box, a rocket ride, a toy castle, a bell tower or a big wheel. Open it for a stamp, a rare toy and a Screwdriver and an X-ray.

Tips and strategy

• Look at the queue before you tap. If the next box is blue, a free blue bolt can wait on the board instead of the bench.
• Bench bolts hop into new boxes on their own, so a bolt that matches the very next box is a cheap bench move. One that matches a box four colors away is an expensive one.
• Plan swings. Before you take the second to last bolt from a plate, picture it hanging from the bolt you leave. Leave the bolt on the side you want the plate to swing away from.
• Dig toward the bottom. Bolts in plain sight will still be there later. Bolts deep in the stack are the ones that free up whole plates.
• On chained plates, clear the upper plate early. Until it's gone, the lower plate holds on to its last bolt.
• Padlocked bolts open the moment a box of their color ships, so save one box of that color for early on.
• If you get stuck, the free Put back is often enough. Try a different last bolt on the plate that swung.

Questions