Color Sort Puzzles

How it works

A color sort puzzle gives you a few containers, such as tubes, bottles or spindles, filled with mixed-up coloured pieces. You can move the top piece of one container onto another if there is room and the colours match, or onto an empty container. The goal is to finish with every container holding one colour only.

The rules fit in a sentence, but the puzzle is all about order. Each move can open a path or block one, and the one or two empty containers you start with are precious. Later levels add more colours, fewer spare spaces, or pieces whose colour is hidden until they reach the top.

What makes a good one

• Every level has a solution, checked before it reaches you.
• Colours backed by patterns or symbols, so colour-blind players can sort too.
• Pieces big enough to tap on a phone, even with many colours.
• Free undo and restart, with no lives and no fail screen.

Strategies that help

Keep a container empty as long as you can. An empty container is the most flexible thing on the board.

Finish one colour at a time. A completed container is out of the way for good.

Move long runs, not single pieces. Moving a whole run of one colour at once saves moves and space.

Look two moves ahead. Before you move, check where the piece underneath will need to go.

Our take

Yarn Goblin is our color sort, starring Grizzle, a goblin who has hoarded the village’s yarn. You sort balls of yarn onto spindles, and a move carries the whole top run of one colour at once. Every finished spindle knits its colour into a picture. Each colour also has its own stitch pattern and symbol, every level is checked to be solvable, undo is free, and there is a Daily tangle with a streak and a result to share.