How to Play Rotate Rings: Gaps, Clamps and Turn Order

Rotate Rings looks like a tangle of coloured circles. It is really a set of small locks, one per clamp, and each lock has the same answer: turn the held ring until its gap reaches the clamp.

This guide explains that rule from the board up, then gives you an order of work that holds on every level from the two-ring tutorial to the multi-layer Expert boards.

What is actually on the board

• Every ring is a circle with a gap cut out of it.
• Two touching rings are joined by a clamp: a small coloured block on a short neck.
• The block presses down on the rim of the ring it holds. The neck runs back to the ring that owns it.
• The clamp's colour is the owner's colour. You never have to guess which ring is in charge.

Some rings are drawn as closed circles with no gap. Those are anchors: they can hold other rings, but they are never turned. Treat them as part of the scenery and solve around them.

The one rule that opens every clamp

A held ring comes free when its gap reaches the clamp. The clamp does not move; the gap travels to it as you turn the ring.

That gives you a reliable first question for any board:

Which ring can I turn without moving a clamp that another ring still needs?

The answer is almost always a ring that holds nobody. Turn it first, and the clamp it owned stops being an obstacle for the next layer.

Work from the outside in

1. Find the owners. For each clamp, note the colour of its block. That is the ring that must not move too early. 2. Start with the leaves. A leaf ring holds no other ring. It can be turned without changing any clamp position that matters later. 3. Turn the held ring, not the owner. Bring the held ring's gap onto the clamp. Stop as soon as it slips free; exact angles are not required. 4. Peel the next layer. Once the outer ring is gone, the clamp it owned no longer blocks the ring beneath it. 5. Repeat until the board is empty. Each clamp is one problem, and each problem is solved by one turn of the ring it holds.

Two rings sharing a colour

Later boards repeat colours. A blue clamp can belong to either of two blue rings, so colour alone is not enough.

Use position as the tie-breaker: the level pages name a ring by colour and by where it sits, such as "the light blue ring (upper left)". Read the position in brackets before you commit to a turn.

When a ring needs more than one turn

A ring held by two clamps needs two turns. It comes free only after the second gap alignment, so do not expect the first turn to release it.

This is also why the number of turns on a board is not the same as the number of rings. Count the clamps on rings that actually move, not every clamp on the picture.

What the numbered solution picture means

The written guides on this site use a numbered version of the level's own board image:

• The red numbers are the turn order. Each number sits on the ring that turns at that step.
• The arc and arrow outside a ring show the direction of that turn.
• The length of the arc is roughly how far to turn.
• A ring that turns twice can carry two numbers; a short line points each number back to its ring.

Read the numbers as a sequence of locks, not as a score. The goal is not to turn quickly; it is to avoid moving an owner before its clamp has done its job.

A five-second check before every turn

Before you drag a ring, ask:

• Does this ring hold another ring?
• If yes, is that other ring already free?
• If no, which clamp is holding this ring, and where is its gap now?

If the answer to the first question is yes and the second is no, look for a different ring. That single check prevents most restarts.

Where to go next

• New to the game? Start with Level 1 and Level 2, which introduce the gap-and-clamp rule with one and two turns.
• Want a board with a closed anchor ring? Level 8 shows how a ring with no gap changes the order.
• Looking for a specific board? Search its number on the levels page, or open the featured walkthroughs for a spread across every difficulty tier.