How to Play 2048: Rules, Strategy and the Corner Method

2048 is the sliding-tile puzzle where you merge matching numbers until one of them reads 2048. Every move slides every tile as far as it can go in one direction, equal neighbours merge into their sum, and then a new tile appears in a random empty cell. That is the entire rule set, and it is enough to keep people playing for years.

What makes it a puzzle rather than a slot machine is that the random spawn is the only thing you do not control. Everything else - which direction, in which order, and crucially which direction you never press - is a decision, and good players lose far less often than bad ones.

How to play 2048

1. The 4x4 board starts with two tiles. Slide with the arrow keys, WASD, the on-screen buttons or a swipe.
2. Every tile slides as far as it can in the chosen direction. Two equal adjacent tiles merge into their sum.
3. A tile that has just merged cannot merge again in the same move, so a row of four 2s becomes two 4s, not one 8.
4. After every move that changed something, one new tile spawns in a random empty cell - a 2 ninety percent of the time, a 4 the rest.
5. Reach a 2048 tile and you win, with the option to keep playing for a higher score.
6. The game ends when no move would change the board. Your run is then recorded to the top-ten list kept in this browser.

Strategy and tips

• Pick a corner and never let your largest tile leave it. Almost every losing run traces back to the big tile getting dragged into the middle.
• That means restricting yourself to three directions. If your corner is bottom-left, press down, left and right - never up - unless there is genuinely no other legal move.
• Keep the bottom row filled and in descending order. A full anchor row cannot be disturbed by a spawn, and an ordered one merges cleanly when it does.
• Build in a snake: the bottom row descending left to right, the row above ascending, so the sequence of tiles zig-zags. This makes long merge cascades possible instead of accidental.
• Merge small tiles aggressively. Board space is the real resource, and losing happens when you run out of empty cells, not when you run out of big numbers.
• When a bad spawn forces the unwanted direction, take the move that leaves the fewest tiles out of place rather than the one that merges most. Recovering position beats a one-off gain.

What makes 2048 different

This is a faithful implementation of the original rules, including the detail people get wrong: a tile that merged this move cannot merge again in the same move. The rules live in a fully unit-tested pure module with no DOM involvement, so the board behaves the same on a phone swipe as on a keyboard.

It also has no ads between games, no interstitial video and no account. Your best score lives in your own browser, on the shared High Scores page along with every other scored game here.

Frequently asked questions

More to read

• Free browser games to play with your team, no signup: Games that start in one click, work on a call, and never ask anybody to make an account.
• Free daily puzzle games to play in your browser: A shortlist by puzzle type - word, logic, colour, memory - of dailies that take five minutes and are the same for everyone.