Stone Drop

Twenty-four stones sit in a pile five columns wide. Tap any stone and the whole group of matching shapes it belongs to collapses; everything above falls into the space, and sometimes lands beside a group it now completes. There is no timer, no move limit and no way to lose — the board simply counts the stones still standing, and you watch that number fall to zero.

It runs entirely on your device: 0 network requests, works offline. No ads, no account, nothing to buy, and no betting, money or prizes of any kind.

1. Focus the board — click it, or press Tab until it is focused.
2. Move with the arrow keys. The cursor is outlined, not just tinted.
3. Watch the ticks. Every stone in the group under the cursor carries a ✓, so you can see exactly what a tap would take before you take it.
4. Collapse with Enter. Three or more matching shapes always go together, and every stone on this board is always in a group of at least three — no tap is ever refused.
5. Get "stones" to zero. Compare your taps against "fewest possible" if you want a target, or ignore it entirely and take as long as you like.

Does the order you clear groups in matter in a tile-drop puzzle?

Enormously, and it is the only thing that matters here. Every group can be collapsed at any time, so the number of taps you spend is decided purely by sequencing. The move that pays is usually the one that clears the fewest stones: take out a group low in a column and everything stacked above it drops by three rows, which can park it right beside a matching group in the next column — and two groups that touch collapse as one. Clear from the top instead and the same stones never meet, so you pay a tap for each of them. That is why the smallest-looking move is often the best one, and why "fewest possible" is usually well below the number of groups you can count on the board.

Can I get stuck, or lose?

No, and not by luck — by construction. The pile is built out of blocks of three identical stones, and collapsing a group always removes whole runs and never part of one. So after every tap the board is still made of runs of three or more, which means every stone left is still in a collapsible group. A position with nothing to do cannot arise, so there is nothing to lose and no fail state to warn you about.

How do I know the pile can actually be emptied?

Because it was built backwards from an empty board. The generator only ever inserts a whole block of three matching stones, and never puts a block directly above or below one of the same shape. Every tap after that removes at least three stones from a board that always has a legal tap, so the pile runs out — in at most eight taps, whatever order you pick.

What does "fewest possible" mean, exactly?

It is the real minimum, not an estimate. Before the board is handed to you, every clearing order is searched exhaustively and the shortest one is counted. That is cheap to do because the pile is small and each tap removes whole blocks, so there are only a couple of hundred boards to look at at the very most. Matching that number is genuinely the best play available.

Is there any money, betting or in-app purchase in this?

None, and there never will be. No currency, nothing to buy, no lives to refill, no wager of any kind.

Does it work offline?

Yes. Once the page has loaded once, the whole game is on your device — the pile, the rules, the solver that worked out the minimum. No server is involved in play at any point.

Can I play it with a keyboard or a screen reader?

Both. Arrows move and Enter collapses. Each stone is announced by its shape name — circle, square, triangle — along with the size of the group it sits in, so the board never asks you to tell tints apart. The shapes are different glyphs, and the group under the cursor is marked with a ✓ on every one of its stones as well as a tint.

Five columns by six rows, eight blocks of three stones, and three shapes. Groups collapse at three stones or more, counted through edges only — diagonal neighbours are not part of a group. Nothing new ever falls in from above: the pile you are given is the whole puzzle.

Mirror Fold is the other calm puzzle here — also untimed, also impossible to lose, but it turns on symmetry rather than sequencing. Colour Sort is the other game where the order of your moves is the entire problem.

Bookmark this page (Ctrl+D, or ⌘D on Mac) or install the app — it works offline the next time you need it.