Category — Games

Once again, here are two more levels that people keep emailing me about — level 180 and 182 of Candy Crush.  Thank you for emailing me or sending me Facebook status with level requests.  There is a lot of happiness that comes from the straightforward simplicity of crushing candies when the rest of life feels amorphous, twisty, and difficult.

For people who have already emailed me about these, I don’t think there is anything new in this post that I didn’t already tell you.  For everyone else, the tips are here if you want them.

Many fewer people have emailed me about level 181, but that one seems straightforward to me: just make a lot of horizontal ones in the right place.  At some point, you will make that happen.  It’s annoying level, but it’s at least clear what you have to do in order to make the ingredient drop.

Level 180

This level is so trick-sie.  You think you need to clear the bottom, so you waste valuable moves clearing all that licorice and whipped cream so you can explode the bombs.  But look at that — they are set to 35 moves, and you only have 35 moves.  In other words, they’re a distraction and don’t really matter.

Only clear the lines that have ingredients in them.

Here’s my advice: play this level on a mobile device, since you can exit when you don’t get a good starting board and try again without losing a life.  What you’re looking for is an opening move that either (1) creates a horizontal break against the whipped cream (three across) or (2) makes a doughnut.  That’s it: if you don’t see one of those two opening moves, exit out and try to have it reshuffle and present a better board.

This board you would play, right, because you can make those three reds pop the whipped cream?  NO.  Because that moves opens up whipped cream that isn’t under an ingredient.  See, I told you it was trick-sie.  Exit the board and try again until you get one that has a decent opening move.

Level 182

This is one of the worst timed levels ever.

You have four quadrants.  The one on the bottom right is the “lowest” (meaning, the candies will cascade there).  The top right is the second “lowest.”  The top left is the highest, which leaves the bottom left as second “highest.”  In other words, the candies move from top left to bottom left to top right to bottom right.  If you want to create a cascade effect, make matches in the bottom right.

So you have three bits of craziness all demanding your attention at once PLUS there is a timer.  For the love.  So here is how you need to focus your attention: break the chocolate, explode the colour bombs, and then break the whipped cream.  Once the chocolate is gone, it’s gone for the rest of the level.  Same with the colour bombs.

But the big thing to get points is to break that whipped cream and have those candies cascade.  Without that, you won’t be able to make enough matches and build up enough points to get to that 40,000 point target.

So, your focus is chocolate (bottom right), then colour bombs (top left), then whipped cream (bottom left), and then cascade, cascade, cascade from the bottom right or top right.

You may need to use my timer trick once again, which only works on a mobile device.  When you can’t instantly see a move, give yourself a break by double tapping the home button at the bottom of the device.  This pauses the timer and slides the game up on the screen to make room for the apps row at the bottom.  You can then scan the board for a moment and look for the best move that will net you the most points.  Then touch the screen to make that move and the screen will drop down and return to normal.

Currently: I’m on Level 213, and I’m happy to go backwards and explain how I did any board before that.  Sometimes it was stupid luck but other times, there was actual thought involved.  Let me know the level you’re struggling with.

Once again, here are three more levels that people keep emailing me about — level 33, 65, and 97 of Candy Crush. I really enjoyed going back and playing them again now that I’m farther away from them. Back when I played them the first time, I got stuck on each of them for a while.  So it’s either distance or skills picked up in later boards that made me see these boards differently this time.

For people who have already emailed me about these, I don’t think there is anything new in this post that I didn’t already tell you. For everyone else, the tips are here if you want them.

BUT WAIT, BEFORE YOU READ ON OR CLICK AWAY: Could you take about thirty seconds to fill out this questionnaire if you play Candy Crush to prove a point in my mind?  I’ll post the findings next week.  And pass along the link to the form to friends who play too.

Yes, I am this frivolous with my brain space.

Level 33

I don’t know why, but I actually liked this level. Maybe it was because there were so few moves, so you could play the board quickly. I liked knowing that it wasn’t going to work out without having dedicated multiple minutes to the round.  See, silver lining!

That said, the key here is cascade, cascade, cascade. Start with the bottom two squares because you may be able to pop some of the top ones inadvertently with a cascade. If you can get a horizontal or vertical stripe, use it, but the cascade will pop just as many jellies as the stripe.  So don’t be tempted to make a stripe when there are perfectly nice moves you can do on one of those bottom two levels to create a cascade.

The cascade is key!  Don’t get distracted by making stripes that may pop nothing in a row.

Level 65

This level sucks and there isn’t any nicer way to describe it.

Unlike level 33, where you should ignore making striped candies, you cannot win this level without making vertical and horizontal stripes.  There is just no possible way to break through the licorice, break through the chocolate, AND clear all the jelly without plenty of stripes (unless you’re purchasing boosters).  So above all else, make the special candies.  If you can get a striped and wrapped combo, excellent.  If not, make striped candies and explode them around the board.  It’s just a matter of making enough of them and using them before chocolate covers them.  So to that end, never leave a striped candy sitting there.  Use it!

In terms of the chocolate, treat it like clutter in your house.  You don’t want it to get out of control, but clutter isn’t the same thing as filth.  Don’t focus so much on cleaning up the chocolate in this level: focus more on keeping it at bay.

Good luck.  Really, it’s not you.  This level just sucks.

Level 97

Whoa, there is a lot going on here.  Bombs dropping (and they go off after 8 moves), weird cascading, and a minimum point collection quota.

So let’s look at it this way first: you will go far in reaching your quota just by taking care of the bombs.  You can’t only clear the bombs and make enough points to win, but you can collect at least half the points you need just by playing and making sure you always take care of the bombs before they go off.

You can luckily make a lot of striped candies on this board for whatever reason, so they will help you to collect points (though I found they rarely helped me take care of the bombs for whatever reason).  And when I re-played this level to remember how I did it, I got two speckled doughnuts during the round, one of which landed next to a green striped candy (when the board felt full of green candies).  I collected tens of thousands of points through both of those moves.

So focus on the bombs first and foremost.  Secondly on making and using special candies (striped, wrapped, and speckled doughnut).  And thirdly on just gritting your teeth and saying to yourself, “well, at least I don’t have to deal with chocolate on this level too!”

Currently: I’m on Level 201, and I’m happy to go backwards and explain how I did any board before that. Sometimes it was stupid luck but other times, there was actual thought involved. Let me know the level you’re struggling with.

I said I would quit Candy Crush when I got to level 200.  That level was chosen because it was a nice round number, a fat number.  I felt as if Level 200 would say, “I got bored of this game; it didn’t get me.”  And I felt as if I had to quit because… you know… that thing called attention that I’m not paying when I’m playing out my 5 lives each night.

And then I got to level 200 and beat level 200.

And then I started to feel that gnawing emptiness that comes when you’re not quite ready to part with something, but you have to say goodbye anyway.  The end of a really good night out with friends.  Those last minutes before you have to leave for work.  The kiss at the end of a visit and then the drive backwards down the driveway where you can still see the person.

INSTEAD OF DELETING IT, I CONTINUED ON.

I yelled at myself once I crossed over to level 201, messing up my exit on a gorgeous, round number.  Now I’m stuck until level 225.  Or at least 250.  Maaaaaybe 300.

*******

On the other hand, I thought I would update to iOS7 the second it became available.  Not for myself but because the Wolvog can’t stop talking about it.  He could barely wait until the release date; expecting him to wait beyond the release date was asking too much.  He had already crooned about all of Jony Ive’s contributions while he followed me around the kitchen, insisting that his involvement meant it would be beautiful and functional.  He repeated the operating system like a mantra, “iOS7iOS7iOS7iOS7.”

I was going to download it while he was in school, but then I started seeing updates from people who upgraded and didn’t like it.  At all.  And I am such a creature of habit, so loyal to keeping things exactly the same.  A case in point: I spent the afternoon mending a jacket that is 17 years old rather than buy a new jacket.  I like this jacket.  I am familiar with this jacket.  So, if I am the type of person who keeps a jacket for 17 years, you can probably deduce that I am also the sort of person who likes her phone interface to look similar from update to update.

The Wolvog was beyond disappointed when I told him that we wouldn’t be upgrading on the first day.  Crushed.  Continuously repeating his iOS7 mantra until we banned the word from our house for the time being.  He got around it by calling it “the upgrade” or “you-kn0w-what.”

“I’m going to post about iOS7 and ask for people’s opinions,” I promised the Wolvog at bedtime.

“How come you can say it?  How come you can say you-know-what?”

“Uh… because I’m an adult?  Good night!”

So I’m asking you about it if you upgraded.  What do you think of iOS7?

Here are two more levels that people keep emailing me about — level 175 and 177 of Candy Crush.  For people who have already emailed me about these, I don’t think there is anything new in this post that I didn’t already tell you.  For everyone else, the tips are here if you want them.

I think a Worst Levels of Candy Crush list should be made, writing out all of the levels that people commonly get stuck on so people can know it’s not just them.  I am now hitting a point on the game where every level is taking several tries to get past, and some are taking many more than several…

Level 175

You have to move four ingredients down to the bottom.  You want to clear off the whipped cream, starting in either the middle or the bottom.  Don’t bother trying to clear from the top.  If you can’t make one match in the middle or the bottom when you start the game, don’t make a move.  Exit out (this only works on a mobile device) and re-open so you have a decent board to start from without using up one of your lives.  Looking at the board above, this one is really a toss-up over whether I’d start over.  You have that one space in the middle with three blues on the left-hand side.  I guess I’d play it out, mostly because there is only one other match and it’s at the top, so good chances of a reshuffle early on that will hopefully get you a better board.

After you’ve popped a few of those whipped creams away, make as many striped candies as possible.  They’ll clear the board and help the ingredients fall.

Level 177

This is one of those dreaded timed levels.  I hate these.  They make me tense.  And this one only has one minute.

Essentially, you need to break through that whipped cream and make the candies fall over to the right side.  Make as many vertical stripes as you can (by matching 4 horizontal candies of the same colour).  The first move I’d start with on the board above is that sweet block of four candies at the bottom.  Another option would be to use the two already touching the whipped cream and move that blue one above it on the left side down on block so it cracks those three across the bottom.

Once you get through the whipped cream, start making matches on the right side.  Make striped candies, even if you don’t explode them.  When your time runs out and it says “Sugar Crush,” it will give you extra points from all those stripped ones going off.

Here’s the thing; time is tight.  You may need to use my timer trick, which only works on a mobile device.  When you can’t instantly see a move, give yourself a break by double tapping the home button at the bottom of the device.  This pauses the timer and slides the game up on the screen to make room for the apps row at the bottom.  You can then scan the board for a moment and look for the best move that will net you the most points.  Then touch the screen to make that move and the screen will drop down and return to normal.

Currently: I’m on Level 184, and I’m happy to go backwards and explain how I did any board before that.  Sometimes it was stupid luck but other times, there was actual thought involved.  Let me know the level you’re struggling with.

I am sort of proud of myself that I’ve moved into the realm of actually knowing enough about Candy Crush that I can pass along advice.  As of a few weeks ago, I was begging for strategies from all of you.  So since I’ve just passed and been asked how I passed these levels, I thought I’d throw it up here in case you need help passing level 165 or 167 of Candy Crush.

Level 165:

The hard thing here is collecting enough blue ones.  Everything else will pretty much happen naturally as you match the blue ones.  So ignore all other tasks and focus on blues.  If you can get a speckled doughnut and combine it with a blue, great.  If you can get a speckled doughnut and combine it with a striped of any colour so most of the board gets changed, great.  And if you can get a speckled doughnut and clear a dominant colour off the board so more blues fall onto the board, great too.

That said, the order in which to worry about things is bombs first, chocolate second, blues third.  In other words, take care of those bombs because you only get a few moves to do so.  Don’t let the chocolate build up on top or no new candies will fall onto the board.  So take care of those two things minimally and then concentrate on blues.  That’s your focus: bombs, chocolate, then blues.

It took me a lot of tries to get a board where enough blues fell onto the board in the first place.  Sometimes there is nothing you can do with this board because 99 blues don’t show up in the first place.

Level 167:

The first time I played this board, the first move made a speckled doughnut.  “Easy board!” I thought in my head.  LIKE A FOOL.

Here’s the thing: the chocolate won’t start until you break those four pieces that are in front of the four chocolate machines.  So take your time and clear most of the center first.

Next, if you can, clear one side at a time.  Once you’ve popped the jelly, it doesn’t matter if chocolate grows back over the space.  You will still win even if you have chocolate on the board, just as long as that chocolate isn’t covering unpopped jelly.  So clear one side entirely (if you can keep the other side closed off), and then pretty much ignore it while you do the other side.  The hardest jellies to pop are the ones in front of each machine.  The easiest jellies to pop are the middle three rows that run down the center of the board.

So for this board, your strategy is clear the middle, and then tackle each side, one at a time.  If you can get a speckled doughnut and a striped, you’ll clear a lot of jelly at once.  Or a striped/wrapped combo.

What do you do if a horizontal striped candy opened up both sides of the board at the same time?  Then you have an issue of chocolate coming from two directions.  In that case, zigzag back and forth, doing a move on the left side and then a move on the right to keep the chocolate at bay and the jellies popping.

Currently: I’m on Level 181, and I’m happy to go backwards and explain how I did any board before that.  Sometimes it was stupid luck but other times, there was actual thought involved.