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The sorting of distinctly different cell types into specific tissue compartments has long been thought to be a problem in minimization of total free energy in immiscible fluids, wherein cell–cell adhesion, cell stiffness, and cell contraction combine to define an effective macroscopic tissue surface tension. Pawlizak et al (2015 New J. Phys. http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/17/8/083049 17 http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/17/8/083049 ) now show not only that adhesion forces at interfaces unexpectedly fail to correlate with the density of adhesion molecules, but also that certain cancer cell lines unexpectedly fail to behave as a fluid, with cells becoming kinetically trapped in what might be a jammed, solid-like non-equilibrium state.