Magic Sort! Levels 671–680: How to Clear Dense Layers

To beat levels 671 through 680 in Magic Sort!, your first priority on every board is freeing one complete bottle to serve as an empty buffer while consolidating exposed surface colors. In this level bracket, identical liquid colors are fragmented into single units across multiple tubes. Pours can only occur when the receiving bottle has open capacity and shares the same topmost liquid hue, or when the destination tube is entirely empty. Standard tubes hold four units, so pouring without a specific destination quickly produces mixed, half-full tubes that freeze your board.

Step 1: Consolidate Surface Colors

Before interacting with buried colors, execute obvious top-layer merges to clear working space:

Combine surface pairs: Scan all columns for matching top colors. If two bottles each have exposed units of the same color, merge them immediately to free room in the donor bottle.
Prioritize three-unit stacks: When choosing between two valid merges, finish the stack that already holds three units. Locking a full four-unit column permanently eliminates that color from the active puzzle board.
Verify the underlying color: Check what hue sits directly below the surface liquid before you pour. Never pour away a top color if the newly revealed layer has nowhere legal to go.

Step 2: Clear and Protect a Buffer Bottle

Once initial surface merges are complete, direct your transfers toward emptying one bottle entirely:

Drain the lowest-depth column: Identify the tube with the fewest total liquid units and transfer its contents into matching stacks elsewhere on the board.
Reserve the empty tube: Do not fill a freshly emptied bottle with random loose colors to tidy up the board.
Use the buffer only for transit: Keep the open bottle vacant until you can either move a full four-unit color set into it or use it as a temporary holding slot to assemble a four-unit match in another bottle.

Step 3: Uncover Trapped Base Colors

Levels in the 671–680 bracket frequently place identical colors in the fourth (bottom) position across multiple tubes. Because these bottles cannot be finished until their foundation colors match, you must dig them out systematically.

Check the bottom layer: Identify which color appears most frequently across the bottom units of all active tubes.
Count the obstructions: Count how many foreign color units sit on top of that target base color in each tube.
Clear the shallowest column: Target the tube that requires the fewest transfers to expose the recurring base color.
Consolidate the foundation: Once that base color is exposed, gather all matching segments into one column until it reaches maximum capacity.

How to Prevent Board Deadlocks

A deadlock occurs when every tube contains two or three units of mixed colors, no empty bottles remain, and no surface colors match. Monitor your board state against the following conditions:

Board State	Risk Level	Corrective Action
Two empty bottles	Safe	Use one bottle as a temporary transit slot; keep the second untouched for major consolidations.
One empty bottle, multiple mixed tubes	Moderate	Stop dispersing single units. Concentrate all valid transfers on building one full four-unit column.
Zero empty bottles, no matching surface colors	Deadlock	Revert recent moves with the undo feature if available, or restart the level to restore bottle routing.

If a move requires placing two units of a color into your last empty bottle with no way to add the remaining matching units immediately, stop. Trace your options backward and empty a different column first to preserve your buffer.