How to solve ball sort puzzles: 8 strategies that work
Ball sort puzzles look simple: a few tubes, a few colours, put each colour in its own tube. Then a level with nine colours and two empty tubes appears and every move seems to make things worse. The good news is that sorting puzzles reward a small set of habits. Learn them once and almost every level becomes manageable.
1. Treat empty space as your main resource
The single most important idea: free space is what lets you move. An empty tube is not just a place for a colour — it is a temporary parking spot that lets you reach buried balls. Every time you fill the last free slot, you reduce your options.
Before each move, ask: after this move, will I still have somewhere to put the next ball? If the answer is no, look for another move.
2. Read the whole board before the first move
Spend ten seconds looking before touching anything:
- Which colours are near the top and easy to collect?
- Which colours are buried at the bottom of several tubes? Those will be the hardest.
- Is any tube almost sorted already, needing only one or two moves?
This short survey usually reveals the first three or four moves.
3. Finish tubes that are nearly done
A tube with three balls of the same colour on the bottom and one wrong ball on top is a quick win. Move the wrong ball away, add the fourth matching ball, and you have a finished tube that will never need attention again. Finished tubes simplify the board and make the remaining problem smaller.
4. Build on the bottom, not on the top
Try to start colour stacks on balls that are already at the bottom of a tube. A colour that begins at the bottom never has to move again. A colour stacked on top of mixed balls will have to be moved later to uncover what is underneath — wasted moves and wasted space.
5. Move groups, not single balls
In many sorting games, moving the top ball also moves every identical ball directly under it, if there is room. Grouping matching balls together on top of a tube before moving them saves both moves and space. Watch for chances to merge two small groups of the same colour into one.
6. Do not fill an empty tube with a colour you cannot complete
Putting one ball in an empty tube is cheap only if you can soon add the rest of that colour. If the other balls of that colour are deeply buried, you have just locked an empty tube for a long time. Prefer colours whose remaining balls are reachable within a few moves.
7. Work backwards from the hardest colour
When stuck, pick the colour that is most deeply buried and ask what has to move to free it. Then ask where those balls can go. This backward reasoning often shows a sequence that forward trial-and-error misses.
8. Use undo to explore, not to panic
Undo is a tool for experiments. Try a promising line for a few moves, and if it runs out of space, step back to the point where you still had a free tube. Remember what failed so you do not repeat it. Restarting a level is also fine — a fresh look often reveals an easier opening.
A short checklist
- Survey the board: top colours, buried colours, nearly finished tubes.
- Finish easy tubes first.
- Keep at least one empty slot whenever you can.
- Start colours at the bottom of tubes.
- Move matching balls as groups.
- When stuck, work backwards from the most buried colour.
Why levels should always be solvable
A fair sorting game never gives you a level that is impossible from the start. In our games every level is checked by a solver before release, so if you are stuck, there is always a way out — usually by freeing up one more slot. You can read more about how we approach level design in what makes a good puzzle game.