All the pretty little gems in the world

January 14, 2010 2:11 PM

How do people get 200,000+ points in Bejeweled Blitz?

I have several friends who routinely break 200,000 points, while I'm stuck at 175,000. I even saw someone who had 435,000 on there.

Please give me your Bejeweled Blitz secrets.

posted by reenum to grab bag (22 answers total)

Speed is everything, really. Well, and luck. A couple early multipliers change everything. Go fast, don't think too hard, and you'll get it quick enough.

(Has totally not been playing all day long.)
posted by restless_nomad at 2:15 PM on January 14, 2010

Work from the bottom up; sweeping from side to side so you can work one side as the other side is falling down.

Make intersecting lines whenever possible "T" shape or corner "L" shape. Those give you the lightning lines that wipe out huge swaths of gems at the end (or in the middle if you use them during game).

Make fours whenever you can, line up those shiny gems near each other to set up cascade explosions. If you have fives, use them to get you out of trouble but blow up the "Lightning" lines before you activate the fives on that color or the "lightnings" won't take out lines.

If you go fast enough, you go to super speed mode where EVERY three-in-a-row match acts like an exploding gem.

Source: 400k+ player.
posted by tilde at 2:19 PM on January 14, 2010

Try and get as many 4-jewel and 5-jewel things as possible. Pause the board and figure out how you can make this happen. After a few in a row, the board will go nuts on you, and you'll end up at 6x, which is great for big scoring.

And yeah, go FAST.

Don't hesitate starting a game over if it isn't going well in the first few seconds.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:22 PM on January 14, 2010

Apparently from what I'm told, there is a cheat in Bejeweled Blitz where you hit a certain combo, or letter on the keyboard, then you click on the jewels and you can get them to explode or something like that.

Mostly, I think it's just luck. Sometimes you start off great, other times not so much. I second what roomthreeseventeen says about restarting a game if it doesn't go well for the first few seconds.
posted by QueenHawkeye at 2:25 PM on January 14, 2010

Using the iPhone version netted me a high score of 440,000. I think the touch screen interface is a lot easier than using a mouse.
posted by idiotfactory at 2:27 PM on January 14, 2010

I am a 400+ player and tilde and roomthreeseventeen are right. Aim for star gems (L & T shape connections)

Also, if it matters to you to get a high score, may as well abandon the game 20 seconds in, if you haven't got any multipliers. The other use for fives (hypercubes) is to hit the colour of the gem that has the next multiplier on it.

Go swift but steady. Try to have the next move in mind, even as you make your current one. Once you stall, all your speed points drop off, and you have to reaccumulate them.

You can clear the entire board if you click one hypercube on another.

You can actually start the game before the timer drops out of sight.

Turn the sound off, it distracts more than it informs.
posted by b33j at 2:33 PM on January 14, 2010 [2 favorites]

I had a friend who was posting 3 and 4 million point scores, which is so wildly out of line with everyone else that it had to be a hack. After one of the score resets, he stopped posting scores, so they either fixed it or banned him.
posted by Oktober at 2:34 PM on January 14, 2010

You can clear the entire board if you click one hypercube on another.

What? Um, I'm pretty sure they've always just bounced back in a null match.
posted by tilde at 2:47 PM on January 14, 2010

The people I know with 400k+ scores use the iPhone.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:51 PM on January 14, 2010 [1 favorite]

My wife says iPhone makes a huge difference.

She's also had friends give her their passwords so she can login to facebook as them and get them large high scores. A bejewelled hired gun so to speak.
posted by schwa at 3:01 PM on January 14, 2010

I don't use the iphone, I do it from my PC. I don't pause the game to think about it, and yep, I've had hypercube (5) clicked on hypercube (see what happens, OMG, check it out) and had it clear the entire board. Twice. Mostly, my hypercubes don't end up right beside each other though. I scored 462,000 last week.
posted by b33j at 3:09 PM on January 14, 2010

You can clear the entire board if you click one hypercube on another.

What? Um, I'm pretty sure they've always just bounced back in a null match.

This was in the previous (beta?) release. I can confirm that the current release clears the board when you swap two hypercubes.


Anyways, for me, the key is multipliers. It's pretty hard to get to even 100k without any multipliers. Here are a couple of things that aren't immediately apparent about multipliers:

1) Multipliers are triggered by clearing a certain number of jewels in a single move. I don't know what the exact number is, but I've found that you can reliably trigger a multiplier by detonating one exploding gem with another -- so long as neither is against the edge of the board. I think the lightning gem might always drop a multiplier. And, of course, the hypercube will drop a multiplier if you clear enough gems. So, while exploding and lightning gems are important for scoring, imho their real value is in getting multipliers.

2) I'm pretty sure that there's some kind of minimum time between dropping multipliers. (I hope someone corrects me if I'm wrong about this.) Namely, you can't generate a 3x within some number of seconds of generating a 2x. This means that you might want to pause a bit after dropping a multiplier if you see a move that would drop another. Note that this applies only to generating multipliers, not collecting multipliers.

Some further notes:

3) Speed is of the essence. The speed bonus you accumulate is essential to scoring. I think I typically end up with between 25% - 50% of my ending score made up of speed bonus.

4) While blazing speed is quite exciting, in my experience it hasn't really proven to be a huge scoring opportunity. However, it is an excellent way of picking up hard to get multipliers.

5) Multipliers that show up on the edges of the board or make their way down to the bottom are harder to get than those in the middle. It is sometimes advantageous to ignore them for the moment while concentrating on dropping new multipliers.

6) The hypercube gem used to be quite terrible in the previous version. The points you would get were rarely worth the time it took to activate. They fixed this in the current version. You'll likely want to save the hypercube until you know it will zap a whole bunch of gems -- unless you're desperate for a multiplier.

7) There may be some strategic value in not collecting exploding and lightning gems towards the end of the game. Leaving more of these at the end gives you a better chance of a huge chain-reaction in overtime. Note, however, that multipliers left to the end do not get applied (i.e.: they give you points, but don't increase your multiplier). So, if anything, chase the multipliers but leave the explosions and lightning at the end.

8) Finally, on the luck vs. skill question: I've gone both ways on this. Luck is definitely a factor. But so is skill. Luck alone can only take you so far (100k? 200k?). Skill alone can also only take you so far (the board itself can limit your score). However, it's my belief that up in the 300k+ range, you'll absolutely need both.

My credentials: an all-time high of 449k (never did break 450k) and gold level up to 125k
posted by mhum at 3:34 PM on January 14, 2010 [2 favorites]

b33j: Try to have the next move in mind, even as you make your current one.

Ah yes. This, I think, is the insight that may take your game to the next level. There are a number of aspects to this insight:

1) Preparing your next move based on board invariance. Each move you make typically only affects a fraction of the board (moves towards the top and sides affect less than moves at the bottom and middle). So, if you know that some part of the board won't be affected by your current move and you've already found a move over there, you should be able to react much faster.

2) Preparing your next move based on the drop pattern. If you can visualize how the board will look after your current move, you may be able to anticipate your next move.

3) But, don't over-anticipate. In a quest for speed, you might prepare a certain move based on either 1) or 2), but then the randomly dropped may provide a better opportunity (e.g.: four-in-a-row or T/L). You don't want to ruin these opportunities by over-committing to your next move.

Interestingly, 1) is actually harder than 2), at least for me. My eye is naturally guided to where I'm clicking, so I'm naturally thinking and analyzing the area affected by my current move. I find it more difficult to maintain awareness and look for moves in the rest of the board.
posted by mhum at 4:00 PM on January 14, 2010

Cheating: Both benefit from the iPhone.

1. On the iPhone, you can pause the game and unpause easily. Depending on how good your short term memory is, you can plan out your next move while paused. Unpause, make your move, glance at the screen, then pause again, Repeat. Harder on the computer, but still possible.

2. More than one person per screen. While you can't make two moves simultaneously, splitting the screen in half and having one person concentrate on one side reduces time spent moving your fingers and eyes around.

Not cheating: hit the multipliers as fast as they come. If at any point you slow down, restart the game. The game is only a minute and you have to be playing 100% the entire minute.
posted by meowzilla at 4:41 PM on January 14, 2010

...there are seriously people out there who do a team approach to the iPhone client? Obviously, I am in the wrong line of work.

The iPhone client is really the way to go. 425K+ here, and I only started getting those numbers once I switched to the touchscreen interface.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 6:06 PM on January 14, 2010

I topped out at 325k on my pc and I can say that practice is really the only good way. Go for strings of four wherever possible. Sometimes everything just sorta comes together and you get into a groove. God knows I go through plenty of 50k games before getting anything approaching 200k, but it seems to happen frequently enough to keep me returning!
posted by fso at 7:00 PM on January 14, 2010

Mostly luck and getting chain reactions.
posted by gjc at 7:37 PM on January 14, 2010

Aslo, don't let exploding gems get near the edges - can't wipe out gems that are not there. Also, try to not let the line-clearing gems get in the same line; diagonal from each other if they have to get that close.
posted by tilde at 7:54 PM on January 14, 2010 [1 favorite]

A point and a question:

- if you don't hit the "share with friends" button on your high score on the iphone, it doesn't look like it adds it back to facebook.

- how do I get multipliers? is it random? AURGH.
posted by tilde at 7:13 AM on January 15, 2010

correction - takes a While to update to facebook
posted by tilde at 7:36 AM on January 15, 2010

- how do I get multipliers? is it random? AURGH.

After some brief googling, it appears that the magic number is 12. You need to clear 12 gems in one move. This jibes with my experience that using one exploding gem to detonate another exploding gem will trigger a multiplier (so long as neither is against the edge) since this removes exactly 12 gems.
posted by mhum at 5:36 PM on January 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Thanks, mhum!
posted by tilde at 7:48 PM on January 17, 2010