Tile Connect

How to play

1. How do you start a tile connect round?: The board deals itself the moment the page opens — there is no start button. Tap anywhere during the deal animation to jump straight to the finished board, then tap your first tile. Board size and mode live behind the menu button in the control bar; changing either one starts a fresh round.
2. How do you clear tiles in tile connect?: Tap one tile — it lifts and picks up a teal outline — then tap another tile with the same symbol. If a path exists that only runs through empty space and turns at most twice, the game draws that path first, holds it for a beat, and only then do the two tiles shatter. Tap the selected tile again to deselect it.
3. What happens when two matching tiles will not link?: Both tiles shake once and a line under the board tells you why. If exactly one tile is in the way, the message reads that it is blocked and the offending tile is outlined in rose for six tenths of a second. If more than one tile blocks every route, the message says there is no path and nothing is singled out. Your first tile stays selected, so you can try a third tile straight away.
4. How do you win, and what happens if you get stuck?: Clear every tile to win. If tiles remain but no pair can be linked, the board reshuffles itself for free, so a dead end is impossible. You can also shuffle by hand for 5 points, or spend 2 points on a hint that circles a linkable pair — both are unlimited. The summary card reports time, score, best combo, hints and shuffles against your best result for that board and mode.

Rules & variants

Tile connect has exactly one rule: two tiles showing the same symbol clear together if you can join them with a line that only crosses empty space and changes direction at most twice. Turns and segments are the same statement — zero turns is a straight line, one turn is an L, two turns is a U or a Z. Every tile is face up for the whole round, so there is no hidden information and every decision can be made from what is on screen.

The rule that most new players mistake for a bug: the link may leave the board by one lane and come back. Matching runs on a virtual grid one cell larger than the board on all four sides, and that outer ring is always empty, so any two matching tiles sharing the top row connect no matter how far apart they sit: up out of the board, across the ring, back down. The bottom row and the left and right columns work the same way. The ring does not lift the two-turn limit, though: the top-left and bottom-right corners cannot be joined by going around the outside, because that route needs three turns — they clear only when a path can cut through empty cells inside the board. This game draws that segment eight pixels beyond the board edge so you can watch it happen. There is exactly one outer ring — a path can never go two lanes out.

Three board sizes: Starter 6×6 with 18 pairs, Classic 8×6 with 24 pairs (the default) and Long run 9×6 with 27 pairs. All three are six columns wide and differ only in height, so the tiles stay the same width on every size and a bigger board never means squinting. Each round draws 6, 12 or 9 symbols at random from a set of 16, so two rounds on the same size rarely use the same artwork. Starter turns on the match glow by default: selecting a tile makes its twins pulse.

Two modes. Relaxed has no countdown at all — just a stopwatch, and no losing state. Timed starts at 90, 150 or 200 seconds depending on board size, adds 3 seconds for every pair you clear, and is capped at 150, 240 or 300 seconds. Under ten seconds the readout pulses and changes colour, silently. Running out of time is not a loss: the round simply ends, the summary still reports your score and pairs cleared, and one button restarts the same board in Relaxed. Mode can only be chosen between rounds.

Scoring: 10 points per pair. Clear the next pair within five seconds and the combo steps up, adding two more points per step up to ten extra, so from the sixth link onwards every pair is worth 20. A hint costs 2, a manual shuffle costs 5, an automatic shuffle is free. The score floor is zero — it never goes negative. Clearing a timed board adds two points per whole second left on the clock. The fastest way to a high score is rhythm, not hoarding hints.

Why a dead board is impossible: the layout is not sprinkled at random and then checked for a solution. It is built backwards from an empty board — each step drops a matching pair onto two cells that genuinely connect in the partial layout, and the order those pairs went down, reversed, is a complete solution. Every round therefore starts with at least one path to a cleared board. Automatic reshuffles run the same generator over whatever tiles remain, so the board stays fully solvable rather than merely having one legal move.

Board codes and the daily board: every round carries a code like 41739205-b, eight digits of seed plus one letter for the board size. The summary card and the menu both offer a copy button that hands over a link to that exact board, and the menu accepts a typed code as well. The daily board is fixed to Classic 8×6 and its seed is derived from the local date inside the browser, with no network request at all, so everyone who opens it on a given day gets the same tiles.

House variants worth trying: play the same code head to head and compare score, then time; run a no-help round where you never touch hint or shuffle and let the automatic reshuffle be your only rescue; chase a combo streak by saving the obvious pairs for last; climb the timed ladder from Starter to Long run, clearing each size before moving up; or play Starter with match glow on alongside a child, so the twins light up instead of demanding a full board scan. Two variants common elsewhere are deliberately not offered here: treating a dead board as a loss, and forbidding the path from leaving the board.

Tips that actually move the score: clear edges and corners first, because those tiles always have the extra route around the outside and become the hardest ones if you leave them; track how many tiles of each symbol are left and take the symbols down to their last pair; avoid stripping one column bare, since a long ridge of tiles blocks everything behind it; and buy a hint the moment you have hunted for more than a dozen seconds — two points is cheaper than a broken combo. The three most common misconceptions are the mirror image of those tips: that a link cannot leave the board, that three turns are allowed, and that running out of moves means losing.

A worked example to check your own score against. Classic, relaxed. First clear is 10 points. A second clear 1.2 seconds later runs the combo to two for 12 points, and a third 0.8 seconds after that runs it to three for 14 — 36 so far. Pause six seconds before the fourth clear and the combo resets to one for 10 points, taking the total to 46. One hint takes it to 44 and one manual shuffle to 39. Play the same round in timed mode and clear the board with 37.4 seconds on the clock and the finish adds 37 × 2 = 74 points, which counts towards the best score for that board and mode.

FAQ