How to Play Dog Sort: Rules and Tips for Puppy Puzzle

Dog Sort: Puppy Puzzle is a sorting puzzle where the pieces are puppies and the containers are tree branches. Every level hands you a tree with breeds mixed up across its branches. You win when each branch holds a single breed. The rules take ten seconds to learn; the planning is what the 5,000-plus levels are made of.

The rules

Tap a puppy, then tap a branch. That is the only move. The puppy leaves its branch and lands on the one you chose.

A puppy only lands on its own breed, or on an empty branch. If the branch you tap ends in a pug, only a pug can go there. If it is bare, anything can. Every other tap does nothing.

A level is done when every breed has a branch of its own. Not just grouped somewhere near each other: one branch, one breed, nothing else on it.

That is all. Nothing on the board moves unless you move it, so you can stop and think whenever you like.

Your real resource is empty space

Beginners treat the puppies as the thing to manage. The thing you are actually managing is empty branches.

An empty branch is the only place a puppy can go when its breed is not showing anywhere. That makes it the only tool you have for digging out a buried puppy, and the only way back from a move you regret. When the last empty branch fills up with a puppy that has nowhere to go next, the level is effectively over, even if you have not noticed yet.

So before you drop a puppy onto an empty branch, ask what that move opens up. If the answer is "it gets the puppy out of the way", that is usually the wrong reason. Good reasons are:

• the move uncovers a puppy that completes another branch
• the puppy is the first of a breed you are about to gather on that branch
• you can already see the next two moves it makes possible

A turn, step by step

1. Look for a finished branch. Any branch one puppy short of a full breed is the cheapest progress on the board. Complete it first.
2. Look for free matches. A puppy whose breed is already showing at the end of another branch can move without spending any empty space.
3. Only then think about empty branches. Use one when the move it unlocks is worth more than the room it costs.
4. Re-read the tree after every completed breed. Finishing a branch often uncovers a puppy that changes the plan.

The order matters because the first two steps are free and the third is not.

Reading the opening board

Before the first move, spend a few seconds looking at what is at the bottom of each branch. The puppies furthest from the end are the ones that will take the longest to reach, and they decide which branch each breed is likely to end up on.

If a branch has a full run of one breed at its base with one stray puppy on top, that branch is almost finished: move the stray and it is done. If a breed is spread thinly over four branches, it will be one of the last to come together, so do not try to gather it early.

When to use boosters

Dog Sort gives you three boosters for when a level turns against you:

• Undo takes back your last move.
• Shuffle rearranges the board.
• Add a branch grows a new, empty branch on the tree.

All three are strongest late in a level. Undo is worth most right after you fill your last empty branch by mistake. The extra branch is worth most when you are two or three moves from solving and simply lack the room. Spent in the opening, they fix problems you could have solved by looking at the board a little longer.

Why it gets harder

Later levels do two things at once: they add breeds and they take away spare branches. More breeds means more puppies to dig out. Fewer spare branches means less room to dig with. Neither change is dramatic on its own; together they are why a level that looks like the one before it suddenly takes three tries.

The fix is the same habit applied more strictly: finish what is nearly finished, take free matches, and treat every empty branch as something you are spending.

It is the same puzzle as water sort

If you have played a water sort game, you already know this one. Bottles become branches, colour layers become puppies, and the same rule about empty space decides who wins. Most of our water sort tips work in Dog Sort unchanged, and the reverse is true too. If you want the liquid version, try Liquid Sort Puzzle.