Memory Match

With a mouse or touch screen, click or tap a card to turn it over, then pick a second card. A matching pair stays revealed and glows; a mismatch flips back after a short pause, or as soon as you choose your next card.

With a keyboard, use Tab or the arrow keys to move around the grid and press Enter or Space to flip the focused card. Press H for a hint and N to deal a new board.

Choose Easy (12 cards), Normal (16 cards) or Hard (24 cards) from the menu above the board. Your moves, pairs found, time and best score for the chosen size are shown at the top.

1. Every symbol appears on exactly two cards, and the cards are shuffled before each game.
2. On each turn, flip two cards. Flipping both counts as one move.
3. If the two cards show the same symbol, they are a pair and stay face up for the rest of the game.
4. If they differ, both turn face down again. They keep their positions, so remember them.
5. The game ends when every pair has been found. Your score is the number of moves you took; fewer is better.

Never waste a first flip. When you start a turn, flip a card you have not seen before. If its partner is one you remember, you can complete the pair immediately; if not, you have still learned something new.

Use the second flip wisely. If the first card is new and you don’t know its partner, the second flip should also be a new card — more information for later — rather than a card you already know cannot match.

Sweep the board in order. Working along rows, left to right, makes positions easier to remember than jumping around. Many players say the position out loud or in their head: “star, top row, third.”

Group what you know. Chunking helps memory. Instead of remembering eight separate cards, remember “the two blues are both in the left column” or “the corners hold a circle and a heart.”

Clear known pairs early. As soon as you know where both halves of a pair are, take them off the board. Fewer face-down cards means fewer positions to keep track of.

A perfect game — one move per pair — is only possible with luck, but a good target is about one and a half times the number of pairs: around 12 moves on the Normal board.

Matching games with face-down cards have been played for generations under many names, including Concentration, Pairs, Pexeso in central Europe and Shinkei-suijaku (“nervous breakdown”) in Japan, where it is traditionally played with a standard deck by matching ranks. Commercial picture-card editions became popular family games in the twentieth century, and the game’s simple rules made it a natural early computer game. Teachers and therapists still use it to practise short-term visual memory. Our version uses its own set of original geometric symbols, each with a distinct colour, so pairs can be told apart by both shape and colour.

• Standard deck pairs. Use playing cards and match ranks, so each rank appears four times and any two of the same rank form a pair.
• Multiplayer. Players take turns, keep the pairs they find and take another turn after a match; the most pairs wins.
• Timed challenge. Ignore moves and race the clock instead, or set yourself a time limit for the Hard board.
• Bigger boards. Experienced players can try the Hard 24-card board, where keeping track of twelve pairs is a real test of memory.