The rules, exactly
- Each shelf holds four items. The daily room has seven kinds of item, four of each, on nine shelves, two of them empty at the start.
- When you lift, the top item comes up together with any identical items directly beneath it.
- You can put them on an empty shelf, or on a shelf whose top item is the same kind and has room. If only some of them fit, as many as fit go across and the rest stay where they were.
- One lift and put is one move, however many items it carries.
- A shelf of four of a kind is finished. The room is done when every shelf is either finished or empty.
Seven kinds of four is 28 items on 36 spaces, so you have just eight spare spaces to work with. Every good plan is about spending those well.
What par means
Par is the fewest moves our solver can find for the room. For the room sizes Suvi uses, the solver searches until it has proved there's no shorter way, so matching par is a perfect tidy. On the daily it's usually in the low to mid twenties.
A rough guide to where the moves go: each group of identical items sitting in the wrong place needs at least one move, and a group moved together counts once. So the fewer times you break a group up, the closer you'll get.
Join before you park
The best move puts items straight onto their own kind. Parking items on an empty shelf costs a move now and usually another later. Compare two ways to sort part of a room, listed bottom to top:
| Shelf | Bottom to top |
|---|---|
| 1 | jar, mug, mug |
| 2 | mug, jar, jar, jar |
| 3 | mug |
| 4 | empty |
Parking the three jars on shelf 4 first takes four moves. Joining takes three, and shelf 4 is never touched:
- Shelf 1 to shelf 3: both mugs go together. Shelf 3 has three mugs.
- Shelf 2 to shelf 1: all three jars land on the jar. Four jars, finished.
- Shelf 2 to shelf 3: the last mug. Finished.
Using the empty shelves
- An empty shelf becomes the home of whatever you put on it first. Give it to a kind whose other copies are near the tops, so it fills quickly.
- Keep one empty shelf as long as you can. With an empty shelf you always have a move; with none, a single bad move can leave you stuck.
- Get a parking shelf back quickly. If you do park something, plan where it goes next before you put it down.
- Don't spend an empty shelf on a single item unless that move uncovers something you need.
Look one item down, and keep pairs together
Before you lift anything, look at what it will uncover and where that will go. A move that uncovers a useful item is worth more than one that only tidies the top.
Two identical items on top move in one go, so where you can, wait until a pair is together before moving it. Watch the room left on the shelf you're moving to: if it only has space for one, the pair splits and you'll need another move for the second. Finish nearly-done shelves early, too: a shelf with three of a kind and the fourth on top somewhere is one move from being out of the way for good.
Undo is free, so use it to think
Undo takes a move off your count completely, so trying an idea and taking it back costs nothing. Restart puts the room back as it began and resets your moves; if you've taken an extra shelf, it stays.
- Explore: try a line for three or four moves, see where it leads, then undo and compare.
- Hint shows the next good move with 1 and 2 on the shelves. If you've walked into a dead end, it tells you how many moves to undo to reach a room that can still be finished. One hint a day is free.
- One more shelf gives you extra room once per room. Par was set without it, so it can take you under par, but it's a much easier room.
If you only remember three things
- Join items to their own kind before parking anything.
- Keep one shelf empty for as long as you can.
- Over par? Undo or restart and try a different first few moves.
Try it on today's room, or warm up with a few rooms of Tidy Endless, which starts with five kinds and adds one every two rooms, up to nine.
Questions
- Does undo count as a move?
- No. Undo takes the move off your count, so your total only includes the moves you kept.
- Why did only some of my items move?
- The shelf you chose only had room for some of them. As many as fit go across and the rest stay put, so check the space first if you want a pair to move together.
- Do I have to fill the empty shelves?
- No. A room is finished when every shelf holds four of one kind or nothing at all, so the spare shelves end up empty.
- Can I beat par?
- Not with the shelves you started with: par is the shortest solution there is, and on the daily our solver proves it before the room goes live. With an extra shelf you can sometimes finish under it.
Play it now
Tidy is free on Suvi, on your phone or computer, no download. Also: Tidy Endless.