Frequently asked questions
Short answers about the game and about this site. Longer explanations live in the guides.
It is a logic puzzle where each bottle holds four units of coloured liquid and the colours start mixed. You pour liquid between bottles until every bottle holds a single colour.
There is no timer and no reaction speed involved. The difficulty comes from one constraint: liquid can only be taken from the top of a bottle.
The receiving bottle must be empty, or show the same colour on top as the liquid you are pouring, and it must have at least one free unit of space.
Only the block of identical colour on top of the source bottle moves, and it moves as far as it fits. The full rules are on the rules page.
A starting position can be impossible in some versions of the game. On this site it cannot: every level is checked by a solver before it loads, and unsolvable boards are discarded.
You can still make a solvable board unsolvable with your own pours. That is what undo, the extra bottle and restart are for.
Press hint. It either gives you the first move of a real solution from your current board, or tells you the position can no longer be solved.
If it cannot be solved, undo back to the last point where you had a genuine choice, or restart. Our guide on solving difficult levels explains the recovery order.
Aim to empty a bottle rather than to finish a colour. An empty bottle accepts any colour, so it keeps every future option open; a bottle with one unit in it accepts only that colour.
The beginner's guide covers this and two other habits in detail.
Because that constraint is the entire puzzle. If liquid could be taken from anywhere, every board would be trivially solvable.
It is also why the order of your pours matters more than the number of pours you make.
No. The browser game is free, has no sign-up, no coins and no purchases. Your cleared levels are stored in your own browser on that device.
Galaxy Studio publishes a separate Water Sort Puzzle app for Android with its own level set and features. Current details are on its Google Play listing, linked from our game features page.
The browser game here is independent of it and needs no install.
Yes. It runs in any current mobile browser, the bottles reflow to fit narrow screens, and every bottle is a large touch target.
If something does not work on your device, tell us which browser and device you use through the contact page and we will look at it.
The site is operated by Galaxy Studio, the developer of the Water Sort Puzzle Android app. Details are on the about page, and you can reach us at support@watersort.in.