Happy Life GamesHow to Solve Water Sort Puzzles: Rules, Strategy and Tips
Water Sort Puzzle hands you a row of glass tubes filled with layers of colored liquid, all jumbled together. Your job is to pour liquid from tube to tube until every tube holds a single color. It sounds like a five-second job, and the first level is. By the time you reach five or six colors with almost no free space, though, every pour matters, and the fun comes from reading the board and planning a few pours ahead.
The rules and controls
Each tube holds four units of liquid. The game is played with taps:
- Tap a tube to lift it. You can only lift a tube that has liquid in it and isn't already finished.
- Tap a second tube to pour into it. Tap the lifted tube again, or tap empty space, to put it back down.
A pour is only allowed when the target tube has room and is either empty or has the same color on top as the tube you're pouring from. If the move is illegal, the tube wobbles and nothing happens.
The detail that trips people up is how much liquid moves. A pour takes the whole run of the top color, meaning every matching layer stacked together at the top, and moves as much of it as fits. If the top of a tube has three blue layers and the target only has room for one, one layer goes across and two stay behind.
When a tube holds four layers of one color, it gets a cork and counts as done. A corked tube can't be lifted again, so you never undo your own progress by accident. You win when every tube is either corked or empty.
There's no timer and no move limit. If you reach a position where no useful pour is left, or where the game can tell the puzzle can no longer be finished, a small banner suggests using undo or a hint. That's a nudge, not a game over.
Beginner strategy
Most early levels give you one empty tube. That tube is your most valuable resource, so the first habit to build is simple: don't fill the empty tube unless you have a reason.
Before every pour, ask three quick questions:
- Can I pour onto a matching color? Moving blue onto blue costs you no free space and often uncovers a new color underneath.
- Will this pour finish a tube? Completing a tube takes four layers out of play and simplifies the board.
- What will be on top afterward? The layer you reveal decides your next move. A pour that exposes a color with nowhere to go is often a bad one.
When you do use the empty tube, use it for a color that you can build on right away. Dropping a single red layer into the empty tube is only helpful if other red layers are sitting near the tops of other tubes, ready to join it.
Advanced techniques
Count where each color lives
Every color has exactly four layers. Before your first pour, find all four layers of one color and note how deep each one is. A color whose layers are mostly near the top is easy to collect. A color with a layer at the very bottom of a full tube is the one that will cost you the most moves, because everything above it has to go somewhere first. Plan the order you'll solve colors in, easiest first.
Distrust the obvious first move
From the third level onward, our levels are chosen so that the most tempting opening, usually the biggest pour onto a matching color, is not the best one. Sometimes it's merely slower. On harder boards it can lead to a position that can't be finished at all. So when one pour jumps out at you, pause and check whether a quieter move, such as clearing one layer off a tube you'll need later, keeps more options open.
Think in partial pours
Because a pour only moves what fits, you can split a run on purpose. Say a tube ends in two green layers and another tube has one green on top with exactly one free slot. Pouring moves just one green across, leaving a single green behind. That can be useful when you want to finish a tube now and deal with the leftover later, but it can also strand a lone layer. Know which one you're doing before you tap.
Work backward from a finished tube
Pick the color you want to complete next and ask, "What does the board look like the moment before this tube is done?" Usually it's three layers in a tube with one more sitting on top of another tube. Then ask what has to move to make that true. Thinking two or three pours backward is far more reliable than trying pours and hoping.
Use undo as a planning tool
Undo is unlimited, so use it to test ideas. Try a line of three or four pours, look at what it leaves, and rewind if it's worse than where you started.
Common mistakes
- Filling the empty tube first. It feels productive, but once that tube has something in it, your flexibility drops sharply.
- Burying a color. Pouring a color on top of a tube whose lower layers you still need to reach creates more work later.
- Ignoring partial pours. Expecting a whole run to move and getting only part of it leaves stray layers behind.
What changes in later levels
The opening level teaches the tap-to-pour motion with two colors and three tubes. After that, the number of colors grows from three to four, then to five and later six. Levels follow a sawtooth pattern: difficulty builds over several levels, every tenth level is a peak, and the level right after a peak is a lighter breather.
From level 20 onward, those peak levels are marked HARD LEVEL at the top of the screen. They have more colors and need noticeably more pours.
The biggest shift is the free space. Some boards start with a full row of tubes plus one empty tube. Others have no empty tube at all: the same amount of free room is spread across several partly filled tubes instead. Those boards feel very different, because your first job is to create an empty tube by consolidating colors. Expect it to be tight.
FAQ
What does the hint button do?
It shows the next move of a solution from your current position, using a shortest solution when it can find one. If you've already reached a position that can't be solved, the hint rewinds your moves until the puzzle is solvable again, shows the message "Undone to a solvable spot!", and then points out the next pour.
Can a level be impossible?
Every level starts solvable. Our generator checks each one with a solver before you see it. You can make a level unsolvable with your own pours, which is why undo and the hint are there.
Why didn't all of my liquid pour across?
The target tube only had room for part of the run. The rest stays in the original tube. Check free space before you pour if you need the whole run to move.
What if I'm truly stuck?
Use undo to back out a few moves, or tap the hint. If a level still isn't clicking, the skip button lets you move on and come back with fresh eyes. For similar puzzles with a different feel, try Nut Sort or Bird Sort.