Pour: The Water Sort Puzzle, and When to Use Your Spare Tube 🧪

The rules

Tap a tube to pick up its top colour, tap another to pour. You can only pour onto a matching colour, or into an empty tube, and only if there's room. Finish when every tube holds one colour or nothing.

One detail people miss: pouring moves all the consecutive units of that colour at the top, not just one. Stacking three of a colour before you pour makes a move three times as efficient.

The spare tube is the whole puzzle

An empty tube can accept anything. That makes it the most valuable thing on the board, and spending it is the only decision that ever really matters.

The rule of thumb: only empty into a spare tube if doing so immediately frees a colour you can consolidate. Dumping a colour into your last empty tube to "get it out of the way" is how levels become unwinnable — you've converted your flexible resource into another blocked tube.

Conversely, if pouring into the spare exposes a colour that then lets you unite three tubes, that's a good trade. Look one move past the pour, not at the pour itself.

Three habits that help

Finish tubes completely. A tube with all four units of one colour is done and out of play. Two tubes each half-full of the same colour are still two problems.

Work from the top down. Look at what's exposed right now, not at the buried colour you want. The buried one becomes available on its own once you clear above it.

Undo freely. There's no penalty and no move counter. Undo is a planning tool here, not an admission of failure — try a line, see where it goes, wind it back.

About our version

99 levels, each generated by shuffling from a solved state so a solution always exists. Unlimited undo, no timer, no lives, no ad when you restart.

It runs in your browser, works offline once loaded, needs no account, and costs nothing.

Questions people actually ask

Is every water sort level solvable?
Yes. Levels are generated by shuffling backwards from a completed state, so a valid sequence of pours always exists.

Can you get stuck?
You can reach a position with no legal moves, but undo is unlimited so it costs you nothing but a rewind.

When should I use an empty tube?
Only when the pour immediately exposes a colour you can then consolidate. Emptying into your last spare just to clear a top layer is the usual way a level goes wrong.

Keep reading

• Block Fit: No Gravity, No Rotation, No Excuses 🧱 — Three pieces at a time on an 8×8 board. You can't rotate them, which means bad boards are always something you did three moves ago.
• Casual Puzzle & Card Games: Pour, Block Fit, Solitaire 🃏 — Water sort, an 8×8 block fitter and Klondike solitaire — three games for when you want your hands busy and your brain mostly idle.
• Solitaire: Klondike, Draw One, Endless Deals 🃏 — Klondike, draw one, endless deals. Plus the two rules that decide most games: work the biggest pile, and don't rush an ace.