A guide to your first pour
How to play water sort
Sort each color into a bottle of its own. Every bottle holds four units. Start by selecting a bottle with liquid, then select the bottle you want to pour into.
Empty or matching on top.
You may pour into an empty bottle, or into a bottle whose top color matches the source. The destination also needs room. You cannot pour from an empty bottle, into a full bottle, or onto a different top color.
The game moves the entire consecutive top-color layer, stopping only when that layer runs out or the destination becomes full. You do not choose a smaller amount.
A two-unit pour.
The source below has two teal B units at the bottom and two coral A units on top. The destination already has two A units. Pouring moves both top A units, filling the destination.
If the source has three A units on top but the destination has room for only one, exactly one A unit moves. The other two stay in the source.
Single-color is only half the goal.
A puzzle is finished when every bottle is either completely empty or full with four units of one color. Two half-full bottles of the same color still need to be combined. A bottle with two matching units is not a completed bottle.
Each color has a shape and a letter as well as a color: coral ▲ A, teal ● B, gold ◆ C, lilac ■ D and blue ✚ E. These labels appear on every unit and in the bottle descriptions.
Make space before you need it.
- Look for two exposed layers of the same color that can be combined.
- Keep track of the space left in a destination. A partial pour may expose a useful color—or leave the same color on top.
- An empty bottle gives you room to uncover a lower layer. Try to preserve a flexible empty space.
- You can Undo a pour or Restart the original mix. Restart itself can be undone.
Easy starts with three colors and five bottles. Medium and Hard use four and five colors, with more mixed color segments and longer reverse scrambles. Every generated initial mix has a verified route to a solved state; this does not guarantee that every move you make will leave it solvable.
A hint that makes a real pour.
Show next pour searches your current arrangement, verifies a complete route to the goal, and performs its first pour. It is a solving route, not a promise of the fewest possible moves. Guided pours remain counted after undo or restart.
If a search reaches its limit, the game says that a hint was not confirmed; it does not label the puzzle impossible. If a complete search finds no route, undo or restart. You can keep playing while a search runs; changing the board cancels the old search.
Keyboard and saved progress.
Arrow keys move between bottles. Enter or Space selects one, number keys 1–7 select a bottle directly, and Escape cancels a selection. Ctrl/⌘ + Z undoes.
The daily puzzle uses a UTC date and starts with three colors. Practice has a separate saved game. Your saved daily stays open across midnight and reopening. Play today’s mix asks before replacing an unfinished daily. The browser saves moves when storage is available; a new practice mix replaces the previous practice mix.
If an old save cannot be read, error S01 leaves the original saved data untouched and lets you play a temporary game. Only Reset saved progress, followed by confirmation, replaces it. For a save failure marked S02, keep the tab open and use Retry saving.