How to Play Ball Sort Puzzle
Ball sort is one of those puzzles you understand in ten seconds and keep playing for a year. Here are the exact rules, the controls, and a worked example — everything you need to go from your first tube to clearing 12-color levels.
The rules of ball sort
- The board: a set of tubes, each holding up to 4 balls, plus 2 empty tubes. Every color in play has exactly 4 balls.
- The goal: finish with every tube either empty or filled with 4 balls of a single color.
- A legal move: take the top ball of any tube and drop it into a tube that is either empty or showing the same color on top — and that has room.
- That's it. No timers, no gravity tricks. The whole game is in choosing which legal move.
Controls
In our ball sort game: tap (or click) a tube to lift its top ball, then tap the destination tube. Tap the same tube again to put the ball back. The buttons above the board give you unlimited Undo, a Restart of the same level, a Hint (a suggested next move), and Symbols — a color-blind mode that numbers every ball.
A worked example
Say a 3-color level opens like this (reading each tube bottom → top):
- Tube 1: red, blue, red, blue
- Tube 2: green, red, green, blue
- Tube 3: blue, green, red, green
- Tubes 4 & 5: empty
A clean line looks like:
- Tube 1 → Tube 4 (blue starts an empty tube)
- Tube 2 → Tube 4 (blue joins blue)
- Tube 3 → Tube 5 (green starts the other empty)
- Tube 3 → Tube 1 (red joins red and uncovers green)
- Tube 3 → Tube 5 (green joins green)
- Tube 2 → Tube 5 (green joins green and uncovers red)
- Tube 3 → Tube 4 (blue joins blue)
- Tube 2 → Tube 3 (red starts the now-empty tube)
- Tube 1 → Tube 3 (red joins red)
- Tube 1 → Tube 3 (the next red joins too)
- Tube 1 → Tube 4 (the uncovered blue completes the blue tube)
- Tube 1 → Tube 3 (the last red completes the red tube)
- Tube 2 → Tube 5 (the last green completes the green tube)
At the end, tubes 1 and 2 are empty; tube 3 holds four reds, tube 4 four blues and tube 5 four greens. This is a legal solution, not a claim of the shortest one. The first few moves are about starting color homes in the empty tubes — not about making the board look tidy. For the full playbook (which color to home first, when to undo, how to read buried balls), see ball sort tips & strategy.
"This level looks impossible"
Our starting levels are checked for a solution, but a wrong turn can still leave you stuck. Undo to the last choice and try another branch. If you need help — or you're playing a mobile app with no free undos — enter your tubes into our free ball sort puzzle solver to search for a winning sequence. A search-limit result does not prove the position is impossible.