Restore the gradient
—
Swaps0
can you restore the gradient?
№ 1Gradly is a free daily colour gradient puzzle. Everyone gets the same grid of colour tiles each day, blending smoothly from corner to corner, except that some tiles have been scrambled. Swap them back until the whole gradient flows again. There's only ever one finished picture.
Tap a tile to pick it up, then tap another to swap the two. The corner tiles and any tile marked with a dot ● are fixed anchors that never move, so use them to get your bearings. The colours change steadily: lighter or darker from one row to the next, and a little warmer or cooler from one column to the next. Each day has its own palette (sunset, ocean, forest, berry, desert, aurora or dusk).
Each day is Easy, Medium or Difficult, shown on the badge. About half of all days are easy: a 4×5 grid with 6 tiles out of place. About a third are medium: 5×5 with 9 out of place. Roughly one day in seven is difficult: 5×6 with 12 out of place and gentler steps between colours. Mondays are always easy, and difficult days mostly land at the weekend.
The game knows the fewest swaps needed (par). Every swap either takes the gradient one step closer to finished or one step further away. Swaps that bring it closer are free. A swap that takes it further away is a wasted swap and costs a step: none earns 12 points, then 10, 8, 6, 4 and 2, and a sixth wasted swap ends the day. Swapping the same two tiles straight back puts things right for free (the wasted swap still counts once). Stuck? The helper puts one tile home and locks it, and its swap doesn't count. It halves the day's score and is only available until your third wasted swap.
Your play streak counts the days in a row you've played, and your solved streak counts the days in a row you've solved the puzzle. Play seven days running and you earn a 7-point bonus, or 14 points if you solved all seven. Miss a day and the streaks start again. A new puzzle arrives every day at midnight UTC.
You can play Gradly without telling colours apart. Turn on Show numbers and every tile shows two numbers: its lightness (top) and its hue in degrees (bottom). Every tile in a row shares the same lightness, every tile in a column shares the same hue, and both change steadily across the grid. The fixed corner tiles show which way round they run, so the numbers alone tell you exactly where each tile belongs. Screen readers announce the same numbers. High contrast adds bold outlines, solid anchor dots and boxed numbers. Your settings are remembered. There's no clock, and the shimmer when you finish switches off if your device asks for reduced motion.
More puzzles: all Streakly games · how scoring, streaks and badges work