STEM
SortTales
Five ways to sort a list — and a surprise: the FASTEST one depends on the list. Meet Bubbly, Inserta, Scanna, Quicka and Merga, then predict how many comparisons each makes and watch the bars race. You will feel "Big-O" for yourself — why the simple sorter wins on an almost-tidy list, and why the clever one wins when the list is a mess. Real, tiny, deterministic sorters run right in your browser. Ages 9–14.
▶ Play it nowBuilt for sittings of about 20 minutes on the screen. That is our design budget, not a measurement.
Meet your mentor
Every Spark & Anvil app has a friendly mentor character that demonstrates, asks, and patiently scaffolds learning.
Mentored by Merga
#3f7bd6 Characters who teach
Meet the cast
SortTales' crew ARE the five classic sorting algorithms — the cast IS the curriculum: each character's defining habit IS its algorithm. Bubbly runs Bubble sort (swap out-of-order neighbours until none are left); Inserta runs Insertion sort (slip each new item into its place); Scanna runs Selection sort (scan the whole rest every time for the smallest — so she never notices the list is already tidy); Quicka runs Quick sort (pick a pivot, split into smaller/bigger, repeat). Mentor Merga runs Merge sort — split in half, sort each half, merge — and keeps the honest point: the FASTEST sorter depends on the list, not on cleverness. Nothing leaves the device.
Bubbly
Runs Bubble sort — compares each pair of neighbours and swaps the ones out of order, bubbling the biggest to the end; fast on a nearly-tidy list, slow on a mess
Inserta
Runs Insertion sort — builds the sorted list one item at a time, slipping each new item into its place; great on almost-sorted lists
Scanna
Runs Selection sort — scans the whole rest of the list every time to pick the smallest, so she always does the same work whether the list is a mess or already sorted (she never notices)
Quicka
Runs Quick sort — picks a pivot, splits the list into smaller and bigger, then repeats on each half; usually quick, hence the name
Merga
Runs Merge sort — keeps splitting the list in half until each piece is one item, then merges them back in order; stays fast even on big, messy lists (that steadiness is O(n log n))
What's inside
Learning goal
Five ways to sort a list — and a surprise: the FASTEST one depends on the list. Meet Bubbly, Inserta, Scanna, Quicka and Merga, then predict how many comparisons each makes and watch the bars race. You will feel "Big-O" for yourself — why the simple sorter wins on an almost-tidy list, and why the clever one wins when the list is a mess. Real, tiny, deterministic sorters run right in your browser. Ages 9–14.
Mentored by Merga — no data leaves the device.
How SortTales handles your kid's data
- ✅ All progress, settings, and AI-generated content stays on the device
- ✅ No analytics, no tracking, no third-party SDKs
- ✅ Free — no ads, no in-app purchases
- ✅ No personal information collected from children — in line with COPPA (updated by the 2026 FTC amendments)
- ✅ No chat with strangers — play-together rooms use a short code and preset emotes, never typed messages