Vials

Medium Vials puzzles

Medium puzzles have eight colors. Now and then a pour that looks harmless leaves you stuck a few pours later, so think twice before filling up an empty vial.

Practice gives you deals you haven't solved yet, as many as you like, and keeps your best time without hints. Every deal is made and checked by a computer: nothing is hidden, and every one can be sorted.

How to play Vials

1. Each vial holds up to four units of liquid, stacked in layers of color.
2. Pouring moves the top color of one vial onto the same color in another, or into an empty vial.
3. It pours as much as fits. A vial can't take a different color on top, and a full one takes nothing.
4. A vial full of one color is sorted, and gets a cork.
5. Sort every color into a vial of its own to win.

Tap a vial to pick it up, then tap the vial to pour into. Tap it again to put it back. Undo has no limit, and every puzzle has a way through. On a keyboard, use the arrow keys to move between vials, Enter or Space to pick up and pour, and Ctrl+Z to undo.

Each puzzle has a par: the fewest pours that sort it, worked out by a computer. Your time is what counts on the leaderboard, but matching par is a challenge of its own.

Solving tips

• Guard the empty vials. They're the only place any color can go, so fill one only when you know what it's for.
• Pour whole layers. A pour that only takes part of a layer leaves the same color in two places.
• Dig out what's buried. A color stuck under three others needs the most room to free, so work on it early.
• Stuck? A hint shows a good next pour, and when there's no way left to finish, it tells you how many pours to take back.