Read the course
The walls are the same for all five rounds and every replay. Learn them once.
1. Walk the course first
Before the first tap, look at the bars and nothing else. Where are they, which rows and columns do they cut, and which stretches of the board are wide open? A golfer walks the hole before hitting. It costs no strokes here either. You will use what you see in every round that follows.
2. Trace the gap's lanes
Only tiles in the gap's row and column can move, and only as far as the first wall in each direction. So the useful question is never "where do I want this tile?" It is "which tiles can I move right now, and where will the gap be afterwards?" Each slide moves the gap to the cell you tapped, which decides what you can do next.
Walls make this easier, not harder. Fewer tiles can move, so there are fewer moves to weigh.
3. Use walls as backstops
A wall is an edge, and an edge holds still. Nothing you do in a lane moves the tiles beyond the wall at the end of it. If part of the pattern already sits there, it will still be there when you arrive, however much you shuffle the near side. Walls are also the best landmarks on the board. "The column beside the long bar" is easier to find again in round four than "column three".
4. Trust the short way
Walls never make a round longer. A run is only published if every round's shortest finish is as short with the walls as it would be with them taken out. So the walls cut away options, and the best one is never among the ones they cut.
That gives you a test. If the only line you can see runs into a wall, or has to carry a tile the long way round one, you have not found the round's par yet. Look somewhere else on the board. The short finish is there, and it is clear of the walls.
Spend fewer moves
These hold on any board, walled or not.
5. Stop tapping, start counting
The game is untimed. Nothing is gained by speed and every stray tap is a stroke on the card. Before each move, say what it is for. If you cannot, do not make it.
6. Reach for the long slide
A tap moves every tile between it and the gap, for one move. Shifting three tiles one at a time costs three moves, and the long slide does the same job for one. When a whole row needs to shuffle along, tap the furthest tile you can reach.
7. Find the pattern that is nearly there
A pattern counts anywhere on the board, and it counts across a wall. With eight tiles of each colour, some part of the board is usually most of the way to it already. Scan every row and column for two of the right colours side by side in the right order, then ask what it costs to bring the last one. On easy this is the whole job.
8. Mind the direction
Patterns are never rotated or mirrored. Red, yellow, green is not green, yellow, red, and a row is not a column. Check the order before you spend moves assembling the wrong thing. It is the most common way to burn five moves on easy.
9. Try it, then take it back
Undo is free, and sliding a tile straight back cancels the move and does not add one. So test a slide, look at the board it gives you, and reverse it if it did not help. The one exception: a move that completes a round is final, because the round is banked the moment the pattern appears.
10. Use the round's par as a target
"Par this round", under the pattern, shows the fewest moves the round needs from the board you started it on. It is worked out once, when the round begins, and it does not change as you slide. So it cannot tell you whether your last move was a good one. What it does is set the target: if it says three, there is a three-move finish on the board, and the round is about finding it. Count your own line against it before you tap.
11. Read the whole line before you tap
On easy a round is a slide or two and you can see it at a glance. On hard the shapes are four tiles and the later rounds take three or four moves, and no single slide looks like progress on its own. Work it out backwards. Pick the spot, name the tile that finishes the pattern, ask where the gap has to be for that last slide, then how the gap gets there. When you can say the whole line, check it against "Par this round". Then tap.
Between rounds
The board carries over, but every round stands alone.
12. A glance at Next
You do not need Next to reach par. On every tier the runs are built so that whichever shortest finish you take, the next round costs the same. Finish the round in front of you in the fewest moves and the rest looks after itself.
A glance is still worth having when you are not on a shortest line. If you are shuffling tiles about to set something up, try not to break apart colours that Next is about to ask for. And now and then a spare move spent setting up the next round saves two, which is how a run comes in under par. It is rare on every tier. Par is the score to aim for.
13. Reading your marks
Each round ends with a mark, and the five of them are the second line of your share text.
Read them together and they tell you what to fix on the replay.
14. Play it again
Only your best run counts, and the second attempt at the same board is where the learning happens: you know the course, and you know which patterns are coming. The day after a run, "How par did it" replays the par line slide by slide. Watch the rounds where your mark was gold or red.
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