Guides › Sort Lab

Tube Pour tips: sorting coloured liquids

Tube Pour is one of the three modes in Sort Lab. Each level gives you a row of test tubes filled with layers of coloured liquid, and your job is to sort them until every tube holds a single colour. Everything is visible and nothing is random, so every level can be solved by thinking, and the stars reward solving it efficiently.

The pour rule

Tap one tube, then another. The top run of the first tube, meaning all the touching layers of one colour at its top, pours into the second, as many layers as the second tube has room for. The second tube must be either empty or have the same colour on top. That is the whole rule, and every strategy follows from it.

Think about the tube you want to empty

An empty tube is your most useful resource, because anything can be poured into it. The usual mistake is to pour from the tube that is easiest to pour, and not from the one that needs digging out. Instead, pick the colour buried deepest in a tube and ask what has to move to reach it. Plan backwards: what has to be on top for that pour to be legal, and where can the things in the way go?

Do not fill your spare tube too early

If you have one empty tube, do not drop a mixed layer into it unless you must. Pouring a single colour onto the same colour, or into an empty tube a colour that has no home yet, is safe. Pouring something onto a different colour is not allowed, so a tube with a different colour on top is a dead end until that top is moved.

Taller tubes

Some levels have tubes of different heights. A colour with more layers than a short tube can hold needs a tall tube, so work out early where each colour will end up. A short tube that holds four blue is full, but if the tall tube still has two blue, the blue is not finished.

Corks

A tube earns a cork when it is full of one colour and none of that colour is left anywhere else. Corks mean done. On levels with padlocks, corked tubes are also sealed so that you cannot accidentally pour out of them.

Clay tubes

A tube stuck in clay can be poured into but never out of. The level is solved only when each clay tube is full of a single colour, so a clay tube must receive the right colour first. Never put a colour in a clay tube unless that colour is meant to finish there.

Padlocked cabinets

A tube in a locked cabinet cannot be poured into or out of, and hides what is inside. The padlock has a colour, and it opens for good the moment a tube of that colour is complete. So the puzzle is a question of order: finish the right colour first, and the cabinet opens. Look at the padlock colours before you make your first move and decide which colour to finish first.

Getting three stars

Each level has a par, and the stars reward beating it. If you are stuck on a star, replay the level with a plan: decide where each colour will finish, then count the moves you need against the par. Often you can save one by pouring a long run in a single move, not in two.

Prefer something with more timing and less planning? Loop Sort is the same idea played in real time.