MyRin Temari: How to Solve the Blind Sorting Puzzle

Temari looks like a quiet game: coloured thread balls stacked in bamboo tubes, waiting to be sorted. The rules take ten seconds to learn. Then hard mode stacks the tubes seven deep and hides every ball except the top one, and the Temari puzzle turns into a game of planning with incomplete information. This guide covers the rules, the one principle that prevents most dead ends, and how to play blind.

Temari (手毬)

Temari is a MyRin sorting puzzle in which embroidered thread balls, each in one of eight traditional Japanese colours, are moved one tube at a time until every bamboo tube holds a single colour, with a hard mode that hides every ball not yet uncovered.

How to play Temari: the direct answer

Tap a bamboo tube to lift its top ball, then tap another tube to drop it. A ball only lands on an empty tube or on a ball of the same colour. Matching balls travel together, so a run of three identical balls moves in one tap. You win when every tube holds one colour, and each completed tube names the traditional colour it holds.

The empty-tube principle

If you have played Hue, the colour sort game in MyRin, you already know the most important rule, because Temari shares its mechanics. An empty tube is the only place where any ball can go. As long as you have one, you can always untangle a stack. The moment you fill it with a ball you cannot build on, the board can lock up.

Three habits follow from that:

1. Keep one tube empty as long as you can. Treat it as working space, not storage. Use it, then clear it again.
2. Finish one colour completely before starting the next. A half-sorted tube takes up the same room as a full one and does none of the work.
3. Look underneath before you pour. Burying a colour you still need beneath a colour you just placed costs two moves to undo, and on hard it can cost the whole board.

Playing hard mode blind

Hard mode changes the problem. Tubes are seven deep, every colour is in play by level five, and you begin seeing only the top ball of each tube. Everything below is hidden until a move uncovers it.

The key rule is in the game's design: uncovering is permanent. Undo restores the positions of the balls but not your ignorance. A ball you have seen stays visible even after you take the move back. That turns undo into a scouting tool:

• Spend the empty tube on information first. Move a top ball into the empty tube to see what is underneath, note it, then undo if the move did not help. You keep the knowledge and lose nothing.
• Scout the deepest mixed tubes early. The tubes with the most hidden balls hold the most uncertainty. Knowing their contents early prevents burying a colour you will need later.
• Only then commit. Once you know where the colours are, play the sequence that builds complete tubes, using the empty-tube principle as before.

Players who try to solve hard mode by sorting immediately usually stall halfway. Players who spend their first moves scouting and undoing solve it with fewer total moves, because they never have to dig a colour back out.

The craft behind the game

Temari (手毬, "hand ball") are Japanese thread balls. According to the Japan National Tourism Organization, the craft came to Japan from China, and Japanese artisans developed their own methods and materials, making them from simple things such as paper, rice husks and cotton thread. For many years temari were a New Year gift for children, and Matsumoto, the castle town in Nagano Prefecture, is still known for them.

The colours in the MyRin game are dento-iro, the traditional colour names of the Japanese palette, which is why each finished tube announces a name rather than just a colour. Japanese has an unusually rich vocabulary for colour, much of it borrowed from dyes, plants and seasons, and the game uses eight of those names.

There is a fitting overlap between the craft and the puzzle. A temari artisan divides a sphere into precise sections before stitching a single thread, because a pattern that is planned badly cannot be fixed later without unpicking it. Temari the game rewards the same habit: plan the colours before you move them.

What Temari trains

On easy and medium, Temari is a planning puzzle: sequencing moves so that you never block the colour you need. On hard, it adds working memory, because you must remember what you uncovered in tubes you are not currently looking at, and a real decision about when information is worth a move. Both skills are covered in more depth in working memory vs short-term memory.

If you like Temari, try its sibling Kamon, which uses the same rules with Japanese family crests instead of colours, and on hard renders every crest in the same gold. MyRin is free on iOS and Android with 30 games and 18,000 levels; the full list is on the MyRin games page.

FAQ

How do you play Temari in MyRin?

Tap a bamboo tube to lift its top ball, then tap another tube to drop it there. A ball can only land on an empty tube or on a ball of the same colour, and matching balls on top of each other move together in one tap. The level is solved when every tube holds a single colour.

What is different about Temari hard mode?

On hard, tubes are stacked seven deep, every colour is in play by level five, and the balls are hidden: you start seeing only the top ball of each tube. Balls stay revealed once uncovered, and undo restores the board but not your ignorance, so you can scout a tube, undo, and keep what you learned.

Is Temari the same game as Hue?

It uses the same sorting rules as Hue, the colour sort game in MyRin, but with its own art, its own colour names and a blind hard mode. The strategy for easy and medium is the same; hard mode adds a memory and information problem that Hue does not have.

What are temari balls?

Temari are Japanese thread balls: a light core wrapped in thread and embroidered with geometric patterns. The craft came to Japan from China and developed its own methods and materials. Temari were long given as New Year gifts to children, and towns such as Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture are known for them.