Tile Connect
Match identical tiles with a path of two turns or fewer.
FAQ
What are the rules of Tile Connect?
What if no pair can be connected?
How do Hint and Undo work?
How is the best score recorded?
How to use
- Tap two identical tiles
Select the first tile (it highlights), then the second: matching pictures clear when their path turns no more than twice. Tap a selected tile again to deselect.
- Understand "two turns"
Paths travel through empty cells only and may bend at most twice. A straight line (0 turns), one corner (1 turn) and two corners (2 turns) all count.
- Use the outside border
Paths may run around the outside of the board. As long as they do not cross other tiles, hugging the border is often the shortest route, which is why edge tiles clear so easily.
- Auto-shuffle when stuck
If the remaining tiles have no connectable pair after a clear, the board reshuffles itself. It keeps every tile and tells you what happened. Manual shuffles are always available too.
- Clear the board fast
Remove every pair to win. The fastest clear per board size is recorded locally in your browser.
About this tool
Tile Connect (Onet) is one of the most enduring casual games of the Chinese-speaking web, steady from the arcade era through today. The skill is less about speed and more about reading. You spot the matching pair in a crowded board, then trace a legal path of two turns or fewer in your head. Both steps demand sharp eyes and spatial thinking.
This version offers 6x6, 8x8 and 10x8 boards, hints, manual shuffles, automatic reshuffles when stuck, and best-time records per size. Everything runs locally, and touch and mouse feel identical. It makes a perfect few-minute eye drill for every day.
Three boards cover the range: 36 tiles in 6 by 6, 64 in 8 by 8 and 80 in 10 by 8. That means 18, 32 and 40 pairs respectively. The picture pool holds 40 emoji, and bigger boards reuse pictures, so several pairs of one kind share the board. Doubling the tile count does not simply double the difficulty, because more candidates spread the reading load. The real test is keeping your sweep order intact. Best clear times are stored per size, and hint and shuffle buttons sit in the toolbar.
How it works
The two-turn rule turns each clear into a small graph problem. Straight, L-shaped and Z-or-U-shaped paths are the only legal shapes, and the check at every bend is that both directions leave the corner open. The border outside the board acts as a free ring, so outer tiles almost always have a route. Clearing them first is not only fast; it also gives interior tiles a second path that loops around. Skilled eyes search in order: find the twin, try the straight line, then one turn, and only then sweep for two turns.
The automatic reshuffle protects the floor: as long as tiles remain, a connectable pair exists, so the board never dead-ends. But every shuffle erases the layout you memorised, which makes planning ahead far cheaper than shuffling later. When a picture appears in several pairs, the order is the hidden test. Clearing the wrong pair first can fence the remaining twins behind each other and force long border detours. Adopt the rhythm of clear one, then sweep, and total times typically drop by a third.
The reshuffle keeps every remaining tile and only rearranges positions. It fires only when no legal pair exists, so it changes layout without changing difficulty. On the 80-tile board the 40-picture pool repeats, so three or four pairs of one picture is normal. That magnifies the question of which pair to clear first. The hint button works better as a referee than a crutch. Sweep the whole board first, and let one hint confirm the search when nothing appears. Best times live in local storage under the key t55k6-tile-connect, one record per board size.
When to use it
- A daily eye drill
Hunting twins across a crowded board and tracing legal paths is visual search training in its purest form. One 8x8 round takes three to five minutes, exactly right before sleep or between tasks.
- Pattern matching for kids
For children the rule reads as find the pair plus walk the maze, and 6x6 makes a gentle start. Ask them to narrate the path out loud, and spatial language gets a workout too.
- Best-time chasing
Each board size keeps its own record, which suits a regular speed run. Auto-reshuffles remove the dead-end anxiety, so the only real variable left is how fast you read the board.
- A three-size ladder
Build your sweep order on 36 tiles, train reading stamina on 64, and save 80 for a fresh day. Records are separate per size, so each board has its own curve of improvement.
Tips & tricks
- Clear edge and corner tiles first: they are the easiest to link, and clearing them opens up the middle.
- When a picture appears in more than one pair, decide which pair to remove so you do not trap the other.
- When stuck, sweep the four corners and the border first. An around-the-outside move is usually still waiting there.
- When one picture owns two or more pairs, clear the outer pair first so the inner pair can still use the border route.
Things to watch
- Tunnelling on one pair
Two minutes on one stubborn pair often ends the moment you try a different twin of the same picture. When a path refuses to appear, switch targets, sweep the board, and return, because it usually clicks.
- Forgetting the outer ring
Restricting paths to the interior misjudges many legal pairs as dead. The whole border is open space, and hugging it is often the shortest route, especially late, when the middle is packed.
- Shuffling on a whim
A manual shuffle destroys the map in your head and restarts the board. Confirm the dead end first, and a hint helps, because the pair your own eyes find is the pair that actually trains them.
- Leaning on hints
Hints hand you one pair at a time, and a hint-driven clear trains no sweep order of its own. Use them to verify a search that already failed, never to replace it.