Ant Pixel Sort guide: open routes and protect waiting slots
The next useful color is the one the ants can reach. Plan around exposed blocks and queue order instead of filling every waiting slot with a color that looks common.
Back to the game →Choose boxes, not individual pixels
Select a box at the front of a queue. It enters one of five waiting slots, and ants collect reachable blocks of its color automatically. The box leaves when its required count reaches zero, freeing the slot for another selection.
You cannot pick a box buried behind another one in its queue. Clearing the whole picture completes the level. The game has 20 pictures; progress opens later levels and lets you replay unlocked ones.
Read access from the outside inward
An ant reaches the board from its edges and travels through empty cells. Solid blocks can be collection targets, but they are not corridors to another block. A diagonal gap alone does not create a route.
A large patch of a color may still be inaccessible behind other colors. Before selecting its box, trace a path from an edge through cleared spaces to that patch. If every route is blocked, first identify a front box that can remove part of the barrier.
Worked example: a center behind a ring
In the small diagram, eight A blocks surround one B block. A B box selected first must wait: the center has no open route. An A box needing eight blocks can clear the ring, expose B and free its own slot.
This is a deliberately small teaching board, not one of the 20 pictures. It isolates the access rule. In a real picture, a box may need more blocks than one visible patch contains, so check whether clearing that patch opens the rest of its color.
A ring blocks access to B
A waiting box is not always a mistake
A partly filled box can resume automatically when another collection opens a route to its color. The risk is spending all five slots on boxes that cannot finish. After automatic collection settles, five occupied slots with pixels remaining means the board is stuck.
Favor a selection that finishes a waiting box or opens several new colors. Think one queue step ahead: taking a useful front box may also expose the box you will need next. Selecting the most common color without checking access can consume your last free slot.
Review the choice that closed your options
Let the collection animation finish before judging whether a box is waiting. When stuck, restart the level and reconsider the selection order. Waiting longer cannot create a path through an untouched block.
Before every choice, check three things: can this color be reached, can this box finish soon, and what does its removal unlock? These questions help preserve space without requiring you to memorize a full level solution.