colonyflow Level 73

Overview

Level 73 is a Normal four-color stage built around a decorative archway picture — a pink arch set in a blue frame, with green side pillars on a yellow background. Yellow covers more than half the board as the background, green and cyan form the middle layers, and orange is the small outline and accent color, with tiny trace colors and white highlights scattered on top. The tiles are stacked in layers, so the clearing follows the arch from the outside in: yellow leaves first, then green, then cyan, and orange finishes at the bottom. The whole challenge is keeping the five-slot queue unjammed while the huge yellow background carries away.

• Difficulty: Regular (Normal)
• Estimated moves: 25–35 taps

Step-by-Step Solution

1. Start with yellow. Yellow is the outermost background layer of the whole archway picture, so nothing underneath it can be carried away until the background tiles are gone. Tap the yellow tile and let the ants begin the long background clear.
2. Move to green next. Green forms the side pillars and sits on the layer just inside the yellow background. Clear it in one push so the pillars disappear and the colors beneath start showing through.
3. Work the cyan phase. Cyan is the blue frame around the arch and roughly a fifth of the board, so this is the second long stretch of the level. Tap cyan, use the 2x speed-up button to shorten the repeated waiting, and keep the queue from filling with any second color while the ants run.
4. Clear the trace colors (pink, red, gray, blue, brown, black, purple) and the white highlights as they are exposed. These small accents hide inside the archway, and the efficient play is to spend free queue slots on them immediately so they never block a slot during the long main pushes.
5. Finish with orange. Orange is the bottom outline layer of the picture, so it only becomes reachable at the very end. Sweep it in bulk; since it is the final color, it is safe to fill the queue with orange and let the ants finish the board.
6. Watch the board approach the cleared state: as the last orange and cyan tiles are carried away, the archway disappears completely and the level-complete overlay with five white input slots appears, confirming the finish.

Strategy & Reasoning

The removal order is dictated by the layer geometry: yellow covers the whole scene, green and cyan sit on the middle layers, and orange is the bottom outline, so the sequence yellow → green → cyan → orange keeps the ants on reachable tiles. Yellow is the strategic bottleneck — it is more than half the picture, and the correct play is to give it a long uninterrupted run while using spare queue slots for the small trace colors. Starting cyan before the yellow and green are gone would waste ants on tiles that are still covered, and finishing orange early is impossible because the outline tiles are buried at the bottom. Because the level runs about two minutes, the speed-up button should stay active through the whole yellow push, and tools like Magnet and Lightning exist only to rescue a jammed queue rather than being used preemptively.

Tips & Common Mistakes

• Running yellow and cyan at the same time jams the five slots and stalls the board. Finish the outer layers before starting the big frame color.
• Ignoring the small trace colors until the queue is full leaves an unmatchable tile blocking the line. Clear every exposed accent color immediately with a free slot.
• Forgetting the speed-up button on the long yellow phase wastes minutes. Keep the 2x speed active for the whole background clear.

Key Frames