How to play Tadka
Tadka is a colour-sort puzzle set on a kitchen shelf. Every cutting-chai glass is filled with stacked bands of spice colour, all jumbled together. You pour them apart until each glass holds one colour and nothing else. If you have played a water sort or color sort puzzle before, you already know the rule — Tadka is that family of puzzle, with chai glasses instead of test tubes.
The whole rule set, in four lines
- Every glass holds exactly four units of colour. Not three, not five — four. Nearly every decision in the game comes back to that number.
- Tap a glass to lift it, tap a second glass to pour. Tap the lifted glass again to put it back down without pouring.
- A pour is only legal into an empty glass, or on top of the same colour — and only if there is room. Yellow can land on yellow or on nothing; it can never land on red.
- You win when every glass is either empty or holds four of one colour.
One rule people miss
When you pour, the whole matching run on top moves at once, not one unit. If three greens are stacked at the top of a glass and the target has room for three, all three travel in a single tap. If the target only has room for two, exactly two go and the third stays behind. Getting a run to move in one piece — instead of splitting it across two glasses — is most of what good play looks like here.
Your first board, move by move
Level 1 deals four colours across four full glasses, plus three empty spares, and par is 14 pours. Three spares against four colours is a comfortable board on purpose: it is almost impossible to jam, so the first minute teaches the rule instead of punishing you for not knowing it.
A reliable opening on any board:
- Look across the tops of every glass first. Find two glasses whose top colours match and pour one into the other. That is a free move — it never costs you a spare.
- Repeat until no two tops match any more.
- Only now spend a spare, and spend it on the glass whose top run is longest — moving three units in one pour buys you far more room than moving one.
Six habits that actually change the outcome
1. Merge, do not spread
Given a choice between pouring a colour onto a matching colour and pouring it into an empty glass, take the match every time. A spare glass you still own is an option; a spare glass you have filled is a problem you have promised to solve later.
2. Guard the last empty glass
The moment your final spare is occupied, the board has only the moves that already existed. Most losses in a colour-sort puzzle are not bad pours — they are the board running out of somewhere to put anything. If you are down to one empty glass, stop and ask what you are going to pour into it next, before you pour anything into it now.
3. Count to four before you commit
A glass with three of one colour on top and one stranger underneath is far more valuable than a glass with two and two. Before pouring, check whether the move completes a glass — a completed glass is permanently out of your way and effectively becomes a wall you never have to look at again.
4. Never tip a finished colour into an empty glass
Moving a glass that is already all one colour into an empty one changes nothing except which glass is empty. The game knows this: that move does not count as a real move when it decides whether your board is dead.
5. Undo is free, and so is restarting
Free players get five undos on every level, and they reset each time the level does. Restart is unlimited and always free. There is no timer, no lives system and no penalty for starting a board over, so there is never a reason to grind out a position you already know is lost.
6. When you are stuck, look for the shortest run, not the longest
Late in a board the useful move is usually pouring a lonely single unit onto its colour somewhere else, freeing a slot underneath. Big obvious pours are easy to spot; the one-unit move that unlocks them is the one people miss.
What happens if the board jams
A board is genuinely dead when no legal pour exists at all — every glass is either full or topped by a colour that has nowhere to go. Tadka checks this properly rather than guessing, and moves that cannot possibly help are excluded from the test, so "stuck" means stuck.
The first time you ever jam, the game hands you a spare glass for free and you carry on. No payment, no ad, no prompt. After that, undo and restart are still there and still free.
What is free and what is not
Levels 1 to 12 are free, with no advertising, no account and nothing to install. Added up, those twelve boards are 279 pours of par.
One optional payment unlocks the Kitchen Gift Pack: two extra glasses on every board forever, unlimited undo, and all 200 levels. It is charged once. There is no subscription and nothing is billed again. Buyers in India are quoted in rupees. Paddle.com Market Ltd is the merchant of record, and refunds run 14 days — see Refunds.
Play Tadka free in your browser
Questions
Do I need to download anything or make an account?
No. Tadka runs in the browser tab you already have open. There is nothing to install, no account, no email and no login. Your level progress is stored in your own browser.
Can a level in Tadka be impossible?
No. Every one of the 200 levels was solved by the same rules engine the game plays by before it shipped, and a level that could not be solved was never accepted into the game. The par number on each level is the length of a real solution, not an estimate.
Is the same level number the same board for everybody?
Yes. Each level is a fixed seed rather than a random shuffle, so level 37 is the same board for every player, every time. That is also why a restart gives you the board you just lost, not a new one.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes — it is built for a phone first, one thumb, portrait. It also works with a mouse on a desktop browser. There are no images or fonts to download, so it starts quickly on a slow connection.
Are there ads?
No. There are no adverts anywhere in Tadka, free or paid, and no video you have to watch to continue.