Mystery Mode lets you solve color-sort puzzles even when some colors are hidden. Mark unknown colors with a question mark, and ChromaOracle will analyze every possible color permutation to find moves that are guaranteed safe no matter what the hidden colors turn out to be. This is the only solver feature of its kind.
What Is Mystery Mode?
Many Water Sort and Ball Sort mobile games include levels where some balls or liquid segments are hidden behind a cover, fog, or question mark. You cannot see the color until you move it or meet a game condition. These "mystery" or "hidden color" levels are among the hardest in any color-sort game because you cannot plan a complete solution without full information.
Mystery Mode is ChromaOracle's answer to this problem. Instead of requiring you to guess or reveal colors through trial and error, it uses permutation analysis to determine which moves are safe regardless of what the hidden colors could be. A move is considered safe only if it leads toward a solvable state for every possible assignment of the unknown colors.
When to Use Mystery Mode
Use Mystery Mode whenever a puzzle contains at least one color you cannot identify. Common scenarios include:
- Fog or cover levels — many Water Sort and Ball Sort games introduce levels where portions of tubes are obscured until you interact with them
- New colors you have not seen before — if a color appears that does not match any known color, mark it as unknown until you can confirm what it is
- Partially revealed puzzles — some games reveal hidden colors one at a time as you make moves, requiring you to re-solve after each reveal
If every color on the board is visible and identifiable, use the standard solver instead. Mystery Mode adds computational overhead because it must evaluate multiple permutations, so it is slower than a normal solve.
How to Use Mystery Mode Step by Step
Step 1: Set Up the Board
Enter your puzzle into ChromaOracle as you normally would. Set the number of tubes and the tube capacity to match your game level. Fill in every color you can see in its correct position.
Step 2: Mark Unknown Colors
For any ball or liquid segment whose color you cannot identify, select the question mark (?) color from the color picker. Place it in the exact position where the hidden color appears in your game. You can have multiple unknowns across different tubes.
Step 3: Click Solve
Press the Solve button. ChromaOracle will switch to Mystery Mode automatically when it detects question marks on the board. The solver generates every valid permutation of the unknown colors and runs a search against each one.
Step 4: Read the Guaranteed Safe Moves
The results panel will display moves that are safe across all permutations. These are moves you can make in your game with complete confidence — they will not lead to a dead end no matter what the hidden colors are. The panel also shows how many permutations were analyzed and how many are still solvable.
Step 5: Make Safe Moves and Reveal
Execute the guaranteed safe moves in your game. As you play, some hidden colors will be revealed. Return to ChromaOracle, update the board with the newly revealed colors (replacing question marks with actual colors), and solve again. Repeat this cycle until the puzzle is complete.
How Permutation Analysis Works
When you submit a board with unknown colors, ChromaOracle identifies the set of colors that could fill the unknown slots. It then generates every valid assignment of those colors to the unknown positions, respecting the constraint that the total count of each color must be consistent with a solvable puzzle.
For each candidate assignment, the solver runs a full breadth-first search to determine whether the puzzle is solvable and what the optimal moves are. A move is classified as guaranteed safe only if it appears as a valid move in the optimal solution path for every single permutation. If even one permutation would be harmed by a move, that move is excluded from the safe list.
This approach is computationally expensive but mathematically rigorous. You are not guessing or playing probabilities — every recommended move is provably safe.
Strategy for Mystery Levels
Maximize Information Per Move
When multiple safe moves are available, prefer the one that is most likely to reveal a hidden color. Revealing colors reduces the number of permutations on the next solve, which gives you more safe moves and faster progress.
Re-solve After Every Reveal
Each time a hidden color becomes visible, update the board and run Mystery Mode again. The new information often unlocks additional safe moves that were not available before. Do not try to plan multiple steps ahead with outdated information.
Combine with Standard Strategy
Mystery Mode tells you which moves are safe, but standard sorting strategy still applies. Among the safe moves, prefer those that create empty tubes, consolidate colors, or work from the bottom up. The safe move list gives you a constraint — good strategy helps you choose the best option within that constraint.
Handle Dead Ends Gracefully
Occasionally, Mystery Mode will report zero guaranteed safe moves. This means every possible move is risky for at least one permutation. In this situation, you have two options: make your best guess in the game to reveal more colors and re-solve, or use your game's undo feature to backtrack and try a different path.
Tips for Hard Mystery Levels
- Enter unknowns precisely — placing a question mark in the wrong position will produce incorrect results, so double-check your board setup
- Minimize unknowns — the fewer question marks on the board, the faster the solve and the more safe moves you get; reveal what you can before solving
- Watch permutation count — if the solver reports a very high number of permutations, consider whether you missed a color that you could have identified
- Use the iterate cycle — the most effective approach is always solve, play safe moves, reveal, update, and solve again rather than trying to solve everything in one pass
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Mystery Mode solve a puzzle completely with hidden colors?
Mystery Mode does not produce a complete start-to-finish solution when colors are hidden. Instead, it finds the moves that are safe given current information. You make those moves, reveal new colors, and re-solve. Through this iterative cycle, you can solve the entire puzzle without ever guessing.
How many unknown colors can Mystery Mode handle?
There is no hard limit on the number of question marks, but performance depends on the number of permutations generated. Two to four unknowns solve quickly. More than six unknowns may produce a very large permutation space and take longer to analyze. Reducing unknowns by identifying colors first will always improve performance.
What if Mystery Mode says no safe moves exist?
Zero safe moves means every available move is harmful in at least one permutation scenario. This is not common, but it can happen when there are many unknowns and the board is tightly constrained. Your best option is to reveal a hidden color in your game by any means available — making a guess, using a hint, or undoing moves — then re-solve with the updated information.