How to Solve Water Sort Puzzle: Rules, Tips and Stuck Levels

Water sort looks like the most relaxing puzzle on your phone, right up until the moment every bottle is full and nothing can move. The rules take seconds to learn, but later levels need real planning, because a pour that looks helpful can use up your only free space. The good news is that a few simple habits solve nearly every level, and none of them involve luck. This guide covers the rules, a method you can apply to any board, and how to rescue a level that has gone wrong.

The rules of water sort

You have several bottles holding layers of coloured water, plus one or two that are empty. Tap a bottle to pick it up and tap another to pour. The level is complete when each bottle holds just one colour or nothing at all. There are only two things to remember.

• You can only pour onto the same colour, or into an empty bottle.
• The target bottle must have room. Pouring moves as much of the top colour as will fit.

Try it yourself in Water Sort Puzzle, which has undo for when you change your mind. Because each pour moves the whole connected top layer of one colour, the order you do things in matters far more than speed. There is no clock to worry about, so take as long as you like before each move.

A method that works on any level

Most people pour whatever they can see. A better approach is to look first and spend a few moments understanding the board before touching anything. These steps, in order, will get you through the great majority of levels.

• Scan for a colour close to finished. A colour with most of its layers already near the top of various bottles is your first target.
• Pour same onto same first. Moves that join a colour with itself cost no free space and are almost always safe.
• Treat empty bottles as your budget. Each is a precious workspace, so only use one when you can see what it will achieve.
• Empty the shortest bottle. A bottle with only a layer or two is the easiest to clear, and clearing it gains you new free space.
• Plan two or three pours ahead. Before pouring, ask what the move uncovers, and whether that new colour has somewhere to go.

Common mistakes

The most frequent error is pouring into an empty bottle just because you can. It feels productive, but you have spent your workspace and gained nothing. Another is splitting a colour across two bottles. If two bottles both have red on top, combining them is almost always better than leaving them separate, since those two tops are blocking whatever lies beneath. Finally, watch out for partial pours: if the target bottle has room for only part of a layer, the rest stays behind, and a colour you thought was consolidated is still split.

When you get stuck

If you cannot make any progress, use undo and step back further than feels necessary, since the mistake is usually several moves before the point where you noticed it. Look for the last moment you had an empty bottle, and try a different pour from there. Many versions also offer an extra bottle as a helper. Taking one is not cheating; it is often the fastest way to see the structure of a hard level, and you can restart to try solving it without. Restarting a level with what you have learned is also a perfectly good tactic.

Other sorting puzzles that use the same skills

Once you understand water sort, you can already play a whole family of puzzles. Ball Sort Color Puzzle uses balls in bottles and the same stacking rule, and Ball Sort Master 3D offers it in 3D. In Nuts Sorting Puzzle, nuts on bolts follow almost identical logic. Bird Sort Puzzle puts a charming spin on it, with birds on branches who fly off once sorted. The main difference between these is that most of them move a single piece at a time, not a whole layer, which changes how quickly you consume your free space. Our free sorting games guide goes through all of them.

Why this puzzle is so relaxing

With no timer, no enemies and undo always available, water sort removes almost every source of stress found in other games. Each pour makes the board a little tidier, and a finished level is a row of clean, single-colour bottles, which is a small pleasure in itself. If that appeals to you, have a look at our relaxing games guide, and the satisfying games page for more of the same feeling.

A worked example

Imagine red sits on top of two different bottles, and you have one empty bottle. Pouring one red onto the other costs you nothing and exposes a new colour underneath the first. If that new colour matches another top, pour again. Only when no same-colour pours are left should you think about the empty bottle, and then only to free something useful.

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