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Ball Sort Puzzle Solver

Stuck on a Ball Sort level? Drop in your tube layout, click Solve, and step through the exact sequence of moves that clears the board in the fewest taps.

Start Solving

Stuck? Enter Your Puzzle

Select the focused tube then tap a color — or use number keys. Hit ✨ Solve when ready.

⚠️Add some colors to your tubes to start solving.

Puzzle Board

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What Is a Ball Sort Puzzle?

Ball Sort Puzzle is the original — and still most-played — variant of the color-sorting genre, with marquee titles like SayGames' Ball Sort Puzzle clearing 300+ million installs and a long tail of clones (Color Ball Sort, Ball Sort: Color Puzzle, Sort Balls). The rules are the cleanest in the genre: move exactly one colored ball at a time from the top of one tube to the top of another, but only if the destination is empty or its top ball matches the moving color. The 'one ball at a time' constraint is what makes Ball Sort the gateway puzzle for new players — every move is small and reversible-feeling — but it's also why high-level Ball Sort puzzles can require 30, 40, even 60 moves: you can't shortcut a five-ball stack the way Water Sort can with a single pour. ChromaOracle finds the absolute minimum number of moves with breadth-first search.

How Do You Solve a Ball Sort Puzzle Online?

  1. 1Add the same number of tubes the level shows you. Most Ball Sort puzzles use 4-ball tubes with 2 empty tubes as workspace; harder levels add more colors and tighter constraints.
  2. 2For each tube, tap a color or press 1–9 to add a ball from bottom to top, exactly as they're stacked in your game. If a ball is hidden behind another or rendered as a question mark, press ? — Mystery Mode will resolve it.
  3. 3Click Solve. ChromaOracle returns the minimum number of single-ball moves needed to clear every tube. Step through the playback to see exactly which ball goes where, and replay it as fast or slow as you need.

Ball Sort Strategy: Beating Hard Levels

Empty tubes are gold. The classic Ball Sort mistake is dumping a color into an empty tube 'just to get it out of the way' — once that tube has a ball you can't immediately reuse, you've cut your maneuver space in half. Hold empties as long as possible.
Move balls toward stacks where they belong, not away from stacks where they don't. Every move that lands a ball on its matching color is real progress; pure shuffles are wasted moves unless they unlock a forced sequence.
When a ball is partially obscured (greyed out, locked, fogged), mark it with ? and use Mystery Mode. The solver tests every possible identity for the hidden ball and returns moves that are correct no matter which color it turns out to be.

Ball Sort Solver FAQ

What's the rule for moving balls in Ball Sort?

You move one ball at a time, from the top of one tube to the top of another. The destination must be empty, or its top ball must match the color of the ball you're moving. You can never move a ball that has another ball stacked on top of it — only the topmost ball is movable. That's the entire ruleset, which is why Ball Sort is the most-cloned variant in the color-sort genre.

Why is the top ball stuck even when there's an empty tube?

Two common reasons. First, the empty tube might already have a ball you're not seeing — some Ball Sort apps grey out a 'placeholder' ball that still occupies the slot. Second, you may have already filled your max-tubes count for that level, so the destination isn't actually receiving the ball even though it looks empty. If neither applies and the move is genuinely legal but rejected, it's a UI bug in that game build. ChromaOracle's solver follows the canonical rules, so the moves it returns are always legal under the standard ruleset.

Can I move more than one ball at a time in Ball Sort?

No. The defining rule of Ball Sort is one ball per move — that's what separates it from Water Sort, where consecutive matching layers move together. Some Ball Sort apps offer a 'fast' animation mode that chains multiple sequential one-ball moves to feel snappier, but each is still a separate move and counted separately. ChromaOracle reports each individual ball move so the playback matches what you'll do in-game.

Is the Ball Sort solver free? Do I need to install anything?

Free, no sign-up, no install, no ads. ChromaOracle runs entirely in your browser, so your puzzle data never leaves your device. It works on phones (iOS and Android), tablets, and desktops with any modern browser — the same URL works whether you're playing the Ball Sort Puzzle app or any of its clones.

How many tubes are in a typical Ball Sort level?

Early levels run 4–6 tubes (2–4 colors plus 2 empty workspaces). Mid-game levels span 8–12 tubes with 6–10 colors. End-game and 'expert' levels can hit 14+ tubes with hidden balls and tight constraints. ChromaOracle handles boards of any size — including the unusually large layouts in Ball Sort: Color Puzzle's later worlds — though search time grows with board size.

Can a Ball Sort puzzle be unsolvable?

Most Ball Sort levels published by major studios are solvable by design — developers run automated solvers during level generation. Unsolvable Ball Sort puzzles do appear in user-modded packs, broken updates, or after misreading a level into the solver (an inverted bottom-to-top order is the most common cause). If ChromaOracle reports unsolvable on an official-looking level, double-check that you entered each tube bottom-up — flipping a single tube can turn a solvable puzzle impossible.

Does ChromaOracle find the absolute shortest Ball Sort solution?

Yes. The solver uses breadth-first search, which guarantees the global minimum number of moves — not just the first solution it finds. If a 22-move path exists, you'll never get back a 23-move answer. The cost is time on very large boards (15+ tubes), where the solver may take a few seconds to fully explore the search space.

Are Ball Sort, Color Sort Puzzle, and Sort Balls all the same game?

Mechanically, yes — they all share the one-ball-at-a-time rule, tubes-as-containers structure, and 'each tube ends with a single color' goal. The differences are visual (ball style, tube design, themes) and around level packs (different difficulty curves, different hidden-ball treatments). ChromaOracle's solver works for all of them because the underlying graph search treats tubes as stacks and moves as legal transitions — the visual skin doesn't change the math.

Learn More

Ball Sort Strategy Guide

Beginner to advanced techniques for mastering Ball Sort.

Color Sort Puzzle Variants

Compare Water Sort, Ball Sort, Nut Sort, and more in one place.

Also solves Nut Sort, Water Sort, and Hoop Sort