Sort puzzle games

What is a sort puzzle?

A sort puzzle starts with a mess of colors and ends with every color in its own place. The rules about how things are allowed to move are what make each kind its own puzzle. Some let you pour from the top of a stack, some sort themselves when you put pieces side by side, and some have you slide whole blocks out through matching exits.

What they share is the thing that makes them so calming: you can see the whole problem at once, nothing is hidden behind luck, and a finished board looks lovely. What makes them hard is space. Almost every stuck sort puzzle comes down to running out of room to work.

Kinds of sort puzzles

Pour sort (water sort, ball sort, jar sort)

A row of containers each holds a stack of mixed colors, with one or two empty ones to work with. You move from the top of one container onto an empty one or onto the same color, and you win when each container holds a single color. Jelly Jars is ours, with wobbly jellies instead of water or balls.

Stack sort (hexagon stack puzzles)

You don't move pieces yourself here. You choose where each new stack goes on a honeycomb board, and when neighbouring stacks show the same color on top, the pieces hop across and gather on their own. A tall enough run of one color clears. Lily Stacks is ours, with petal stacks on lily pads that open into a lotus.

Color block exit puzzles

Colored blocks sit in a fenced board with colored exits set into the fence. Slide each block out through an exit of its own color, as long as it fits. Wool Gates is ours: the blocks are flocks of sheep and the exits are dyed gates, some with a wheel that changes color after every move.

Which sort puzzle should you start with?

Never played one? Start with Jelly Jars. Tap a jar, tap another to pour, and the first levels are small enough to solve by eye. It's the easiest way to learn the habit that matters in every sort puzzle: keeping an empty space for as long as you can.

Want something that plays itself a little? Lily Stacks is the most relaxing of the three. You only decide where a stack goes, then watch the petals hop and chain. It's about placement and looking one move ahead.

Like logic more than color? Wool Gates is the most puzzly. Each level has a par from our solver's best answer, and the dye wheels turn every move, so timing becomes part of the solution.

How to play Jelly Jars

Every jar holds four jellies, and every color has exactly four jellies, so a finished jar is four of a kind. You can only pour onto an empty jar or onto a jelly of the same color. When the top of a jar has several matching jellies in a row, they pour together, as many as fit. Later levels add sleepy jellies that hide their color and jars with lids that open after a few moves.

Each level has a par from our solver, and three stars means matching it. The Daily Jar is the same puzzle for everyone that day and is scored out of 1,000. Turn on Shape helper and every jelly shows a big shape, so you can sort by shape instead of color.

How to play Lily Stacks

Three petal stacks wait on the bank. Drag one onto an empty lily pad. If a neighbouring stack has the same color on top, the petals hop across and gather where that color is longest, and uncovering the color underneath can set off a chain. Ten petals of one color on top open into a lotus and float away.

Each pond has a goal, like opening a number of lotuses. Stars come from how many pads are still empty when you reach it, so a tidy pond scores best. Frogs, flowing currents, face down petals and dragonflies join in as you move through five ponds.

How to play Wool Gates

Drag a flock up, down, left or right. It follows your finger one cell at a time and can't pass hedges, trees or other sheep. A flock leaves when it touches a gate of its color and its whole width fits inside the gate. Flocks never turn, so a flock too wide for one gate might fit another on a different side.

Dye wheel gates change to their next color after every move you make, and a flock parked at a wheel gate trots out by itself when its color comes round. Every color also has its own shape on the sheep and the gates, so you never have to rely on color alone.

Sort puzzle tips that work everywhere

• Protect your empty space. An empty jar, an open pad or a clear lane is your most valuable piece. Don't fill it unless the move opens something up right away.
• Finish the nearest color first. A jar with three of a color only needs one more. A finished color frees room for everything else.
• Move runs, not singles. In a pour sort, matching pieces travel together. Waiting one move to pour three at once saves space and moves.
• Keep the middle open in stack sort. Corner pads have the fewest neighbours, so stacks parked there rarely merge again.
• Clear the blocker before the block. In a color block puzzle, the best first move is often the flock in the way, not the one you want out.
• Count before you commit. If a dye wheel needs three turns to show your color, make three useful moves elsewhere and arrive on the last one.

Our longer article on how to solve color sort puzzles goes through hidden colors, locked jars and when to use the extra jar.

Questions