Tuesday 27 August 2013

Level 275

This is very simple to describe: HARDEST. LEVEL. EVER. Well, so far anyway.

A simple case of blast away the jelly it most certainly is not. Behind the two chocolate pieces in the top corners are bombs with a life of just THREE lives.

You have a few options in the way you deal with them: if you are lucky, you can match them or smash them using a rainbow (if you happen to have one and it's adjacent to the colour you need), but then another one will just appear against and you're fighting a losing battle. If you are really lucky, you will be able to move them away from the corner into a match position and leave a regular candy in their place, thus blocking the appearance of a new one. If you are really, really lucky, then a piece of chocolate will be created to cover them, and you will breathe a huge sigh of relief.

But really, the way to deal with them is to NOT deal with them, i.e. do your matches in a way that stays away from them as much as possible. That means no blasting away with rainbow+stripe or rainbow+wrapped. These risk opening up those bombs and then you are f*cked.

The way to win is to work the lower part of the board first, and slowly, gently use moves without too many side effects to clear away jelly. Just stripes are OK, but stay away from the edges and the top. The fish are a little bit helpful - sometimes they are kind enough to get those hard-to-clear jelly in the top corners - but again be careful not to match them with anything too powerful. Using rainbows to just clear one colour is also helpful. Then, when you only have a few pieces of jelly left, you can bring out some heavy artillery to get rid of the last bits. When you eventually do finish this, it will probably be with plenty of moves left. Until that time, you will get tantalisingly close, or think you have made a really good start when a cascading match opens up one of those bombs.

Scores
Difficulty: 10
Frustration: 10
Tease: 10

Monday 19 August 2013

Level 265

Do you hate the chocolate factory? Well, now you have a new mortal enemy - the bomb factory. This level is one of the hardest of all. Only 8 bits of jelly to remove, but they are in the most awkward of positions, and as soon as you match in one of them, they are replaced with a bomb. On the one hand, you want to match in the jelly as quickly as possible, but on the other hand, if you do it too quickly, you will create a multitude of bombs and be unable to get rid of them.

Completing this level requires (a) some luck, (b) striking that balance. The things you will find helpful are stripes with horizontals that you can manipulate into place to wipe out across (or match 2 stripes for similar effect), and also rainbows, which are useful just to get rid of individual jelly as well as matching with stripes for maximum destruction.

You will get tantalisingly close on this level and have many "if only" thoughts. It just requires a lot of patience and looking ahead at how the candy will fall. Remember also that matching the bombs away from their original locations is an equally good way to remove them.

Score
Difficulty: 10
Frustration: 9
Tease: 9

Sunday 18 August 2013

Level 210

At first you look at this, and think the way to clear all that jelly is to match stripes and wrapped candy and swipe across it bit by bit, and to match some of those rainbows with stripes for even more destruction. Then you try it, and keep running out of moves - 30 isn't a lot to clear such a large area.

But once you realize the trick, it's not so hard after all. Just work one of the upper rainbows all the way down to the bottom, and match two rainbows. This will clear all of the licorice on the right (and everything on the left too), and then you'll have regular candy to match and clear, and you're done! Quite simple, really.

It helps to look at the initial positions before starting to ensure you've got some good matches that can help drop the rainbows as quickly as possible before you can progress to the next part of clearing the jelly.




Scores
Difficulty: 10 if you don't know the trick
Frustration: 7
Tease: 7

Level 258

Wow - this one is a killer. 35 moves to get rid of the bombs, but a further 10 moves to clear just 16 jellies. But oh such difficult ones, especially when bombs are gone and there's jelly just sitting there with no pieces near them to help you make matches.

I kept trying to get stripes in the edges of the central 'plus' section and match them to wipe out the jelly, but (a) this is really hard, (b) it doable in the bottom section but near impossible in the top, and (c) there just aren't enough moves.

In the end, it was a case of serendipity: I matched the fish with stripes, and then with wrapped candy. Lo and behold, they flew out to the jelly and wreaked far more damage - turning into stripes and wrapped respectively - and I was able to clear all the jelly.

So the way to win this is to not match the fish as soon as possible, but release them, then work stripes and wrappers near them, and only then match.

Scores
Difficulty: 8
Frustration: 7
Tease: 9