DucklarkGames

How to play / Pond Sort

How to play Pond Sort

Cherry, apple, strawberry, raspberry: you can see that these four belong together, and Pond Sort turns that small pleasure into a card game. It plays like solitaire, except the cards are words and the suits are groups that you have to work out for yourself.

Play Pond Sort now

Hidden groups of four

Every word on the table belongs to a group of exactly four words, and nobody tells you the groups at the start. A group might be things that float or red fruits, for example. When a group is complete, its name appears in a banner for a moment.

The words sit in several places on the table. Some are in columns, with only the lowest word face up. Others wait in a basket, with a pile beside it for the words you have turned over.

Columns, basket, pile and nests

  • Nests are where groups are finished. An empty nest takes any word. After that, a nest takes only words from the same group as the first one. The fourth word completes the group, its name shows, and the nest is empty again.
  • Columns are for digging. Put a word on another word of its own group, and the face-down cards under the one you moved turn up.
  • The basket gives you a fresh word each time you use it. When the basket runs out, tapping it puts the pile back.

Moving cards by tap or by drag

Tap a word, then tap where it should go: a nest, or a column that ends in a word of its group. You can also drag a word to its place. A column stack moves together, so tapping a word in the middle carries every card below it.

At a keyboard, Z undoes, H asks for a hint, and D, or the spacebar, turns over the next word from the basket. Escape lets go of a selected word.

Slips: the cost of a wrong guess

Because the groups are hidden, a wrong placement is a guess that did not work out. The word hops back to where it was, and the attempt counts as a move. The game calls it a slip, and your result reports how many you made.

A nest refuses a second nest for a group that already has one open, and that refusal counts as a slip as well, since splitting a group across two nests would ruin it.

Counting moves: draws, placements and undos

Everything you do is a move: each turn of the basket, each word placed, each slip, and each undo. Undo is therefore not free in this game. Taking a step back costs one move, so think a moment before you commit.

Each deal has a par, the move count of a clean solution worked out in advance. The shared result reads like "sorted in 31 moves (par 28), 1 slip".

Today's deal and the ladder of levels

Today's deal has five groups and four nests, the same for everyone, with a new one each day. On a daily, fewer moves is better, and each hint adds two moves to your total.

The levels start gently: Level 1 has three groups and three nests. They grow to four, then five, and eventually six groups. Later levels bring in trickier groups. Every deal has been checked in advance by a solver, so a deal always can be sorted.

Eggs and running out of moves

A level gives you a limited number of moves. If you sort it, you earn up to three eggs: three if you finished within two moves of par, two if you were a fair way over, and one for any finish. If the moves run out, you can take ten more moves once, or try the level again.

Streaks and freezes in Pond Sort

Sorting the daily deal on its own day grows your streak. Every seven days in a row earns a freeze, up to two, and each covers a missed day. Your pond stats show a path with a flower for every daily sorted, a month at a time.

Sorting tips from the mechanics

  • Use the face-up words first. Every turn of the basket costs a move.
  • If a word could belong to two groups, wait until you see more of the cards. Deals are built so that each word fits only one group.
  • If a hint reports that nothing can go anywhere new, undo a few moves. An earlier choice trapped a word.

Pond Sort questions answered

Can a word really fit only one group?

Yes. Each deal is checked so that every word fits just one of its groups, and that a solution exists.

Does a hint cost anything?

On the daily deal, a hint adds two moves to your total. On a level, it does not add moves.

Why did my word jump back?

It went to a nest or column that belongs to a different group. That is a slip, and it costs a move.

More games like Pond Sort

Play Pond Sort now