Category — Games

Merry almost Christmas.  I know some people start opening gifts the night before, so pretend that I have wrapped a bunch of treats and placed them under your tree to be opened throughout the day.  They are all Candy Crush tricks that will help you get through the various level*.  I thought we could all use a bit of mindlessness.  So the first box you open contains advice on how to balance Odus, the Candy Crush owl in Dreamworld.

Oh Odus, I love you.  You are so cute.  I like hanging out with a bird while I play.  It is much nicer than hanging out with that incredibly tall man or the squat girl with the long arms.  They stare at me and make me uncomfortable.  Actually, the girl doesn’t look at me insomuch as she looks through me.

It took me until about board 30 before I realized that the Dreamworld board is pretty much EXACTLY the same as the regular Candy Crush board with the added task of balancing two colours.  So they’re actually harder, even though in retrospect, they seemed easier at first.  The two colours are — of course — imbalanced on the board.  There always seems to be more of one than the other.  And beyond that, sometimes you have a great move fall into place, such as a speckled doughnut next to a striped candy, but you can’t use it because if you do, it will clear off too much of one colour and not enough of another.

So how do you balance Odus the Owl?

I deal with him the same way I deal with a toddler on the verge of a tantrum: don’t look at him, don’t talk to him, don’t even breathe near him. Instead, I look at whatever the other colours are on the board that I DON’T have to balance (for instance, if Odus’s two colours are red and blue, I will make matches with yellow, green, and purple) and make matches with those.

It’s difficult to count just how many matches you need to get to Moon Struck, but suffice to say, it’s better to focus on making matches to get to Moon Struck and then allowing Moon Struck to work its magic.  It usually ends up clearing large chunks of the board, and you don’t even really need to use a move within Moon Struck to do this.  The sad part is that you’re not really using a strategy per se.  You’re winning because you reach a point in the game where the board starts exploding and for a few brief seconds, balance flies out the window.

But still, I’m not one to look a gifted Sugar Crush in the mouth.

Another tip for the Dreamworld is that if you ever get a speckled doughnut, combine it with one of the non-balance colours on the board so it doesn’t accidentally mix with one of the balance colours.

Another present will be ready to be opened in the morning.  I figured if you were stressed out with Christmas stuff, you could use the distraction.  At the very least, know there is someone Jewish hanging around during the next 24 hours if you want to talk.  All I’m doing is reading, lounging, and crushing candies.

Merry Christmas.

* Uh, I guess this is sort of just like real life gift giving because maybe I’ve gotten you a completely sucky gift.  Maybe you hate Candy Crush, and if that’s the case, I’m sorry because it’s not as if you can return these posts and get store credit.  Feel free to skip or skim, though even if you don’t play the game, you’ll understand the last post.

Yes, another one.  Skip it if you don’t play Candy Crush.  If you do, you understand the frustration Level 350 and Level 356 bring.  I have a very specific way for winning both of these levels.

Both are awful.  For me, until I figured out how to do it, 356 was actually worse.  Read on if you’re also stuck.

Level 350 of Candy Crush

I had heard awful things about this level.  It seemed a place where everyone got stuck, so I went into it knowing that I would likely be stuck there too for a bit.  It probably helped to anticipate that it was going to be awful.  I liked having the knowledge that it was going to suck, and it was going to suck hard.

This is a board that you will want to play from a device that will allow you to exit without wasting a life because there is only one type of board worth playing, and that is one where an opening move breaks three pieces of whipped cream, like the board above.  I know what you’re thinking: before reading that last sentence, you would have made a striped with those four red in a row, but you’d be wrong.  You actually want to break downward, ignoring all else.

Drill down, drill down through that whipped cream, and only focus on that whipped cream, preferably the middle of it.  If you get too close to the edge, you’ll set off the bombs.  And you’re not ready for that yet.  Don’t set off speckled doughnuts if you can help it.  Only use stripes or bombs if they clear whipped cream and nothing else.  Think of yourself as a worker ant with one task: clear the whipped cream.  Everything else is a distraction meant to mess you up.

The only time you want to use a striped/wrap combo is AFTER you’ve cleared most of the whipped cream and you can use it very low down on the board.  Same with a striped/doughnut combo.  Play it before you’ve cleared that whipped cream, and you’ve created a bomb nightmare.  Play it after you’ve cleared the whipped cream, and you can pop a lot of the jelly at the top of the board.

Get it?  Don’t get distracted.  Just focus on the whipped cream.

The reality is that once you clear the whipped cream, you’ll leave a big chunk of the board open and will likely make a lot of combos.  So break that whipped cream as your sole focus, and you’ll clear the board with combos after most of the whipped cream is gone.

Good luck!

Level 356 of Candy Crush

The first few times I played this board, I only made one striped combo.  Most rounds ended without making any.  Then I was teaching Hour of Code (see, I do erudite things too) and I realized that I was going about this wrong.  I had to think about this board as I would rethreading a drawstring that has gotten pulled out of a sweatshirt hood.  You don’t focus on trying to move the string insomuch as you try to move something else (like a ballpoint pen) through that drawstring area.

So it helps to know how the candies move.  The ones in the top left only fall in the top left.  The ones in the bottom left move the ones in its own quadrant and the one above.  The top right quadrant moves the candies in the two quadrants on the left, and the bottom right quadrant is rock bottom.  That quadrant is the least helpful place to have a striped candy.  I’ll explain that in a moment.  But the board reads like a two-column article.  You get to the bottom of the left column and your eye goes to the top right and starts to read down again.  Same with the candies.

When you make a striped candy, let’s say, in that far right row in the top right quadrant (with the orange ones), you will now want to make your next striped candy in either that row (far right, any quadrant) or the one right next to it (second from right row, any quadrant).  Let’s pretend you made one in the second-from-the-right row in the bottom left quadrant.  What you’d want to do to pull it toward your other striped candy is to make any matches in that SAME ROW (second-from-the-right) in either of the right quadrants.  Because that will gently pull it — like a drawstring — toward the one that is already in the top right quadrant.

Did that make sense?  Essentially every row moves as one with others in the same placement regardless of quadrant.  So if you make a match in the far left row on the bottom right quadrant, it will affect every left row.  But only every left row (unless it inadvertently makes a match along the way).  So, back to that striped orange candy you made in the top right quadrant.  When you did that, you also made a vertical three-way match with the yellow ones in the second-from-the-right row, correct?  That is going to move all the other candies in the second-to-right row that are above it.  So it will move that green one down and it will also move the yellow-blue-green-yellow-yellow-blue-yellow-orange (read that going downward) in the second-from-the-right row in the two left quadrants.

Got it?

Be prepared that striped ones will accidentally be detonated before you can use them.  And that’s okay.  Because you’ll make a bunch of them.  And you’ll work slowly and patiently to slide candies through like you’re rethreading a drawstring.  Don’t stress too much about the bombs; they usually get taken out as they travel down the board.  Only deal with them if they’re about to go off.  And yes, you can also bring down candies that will match that bomb and get rid of it using this same method.

A hint: it is easiest if you can make the striped candies on the left side because then you can gently tug things down on the right side.  They don’t have to travel as far on the left.

Also, look for places where you have two of one colour (let’s say, red), one of another colour (blue), and then another red.  Make a match in another quadrant to gently pull down another red in that blue row.  That will form a stripe for you.  If nothing else, make a match in the bottom right quadrant because it will mix up all the quadrants for you and give you a new chance to create a stripe.

And that’s how it’s done.  I passed it in two tries when I changed the way I was thinking about playing this board to my rethreading method.

Currently: I’m on Level 361, 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 (here are the other advice posts I’ve written). Let me know the level you’re struggling with.

Updated at the Bottom

I woke up this morning to a cold snow and a cold realization: the Candy Crush Prize Wheel is gone.  No more free spins.  No more boosters.  No more collecting of sweet lollipop hammers or striped/wrap combos.

It left in the night without so much as a goodbye.

If I had known that yesterday would be my last spin, I would have spent more time with it.  I would have told the Prize Wheel how much I loved spinning it every morning.  I would have whispered thank you to the screen.

For the love, King.com, you make the levels so difficult, and then you take away our Prize Wheel?  You made me want to weep — WEEP — with level 350.  You can’t give me my one joy?  Don’t you realize that I never even used the boosters?  I just liked collecting them.  I have about 12 speckled doughnuts lying in wait.  Your Prize Wheel was like the free burrito wheel at California Tortilla.  No one goes to the restaurant to spin the Monday Night Mystery Prize Burrito Wheel, but we appreciate the ability to set something spinning while we wait for our meal.

I liked spinning the wheel.

At least the Dreamworld is still there.

Please don’t take away my Dreamworld too, King.com.  Leave me at least that.

Update:

My Prize Wheel is back!  My Prize Wheel is back!  My Prize Wheel is back!

Oh sweet Prize Wheel, I’m sorry that I took you for granted.  Even if you’re only popping in for a visit, I am so glad to see you again.  I will spin you daily.  I will croon sweet words at the screen.

AND…

Even better…

Dreamworld is now on my phone.  It just showed up when I logged in today.  So now I have the Dreamworld on the computer and on my phone.

I love you, Candy Crush.

Even though I sort of hate you for level 356.

But really, even though I curse you for that level, I do love you.

My pre-Christmas gift to you is a copy of the post-it note I made myself to get through level 315 of Candy Crush.  Let me start by saying that this level frustrated me almost as much as the timed levels.  It involves sliding over two ingredients at least two spaces.  So four lateral moves in total.

You likely do lateral moves all the time without thinking about it.  But once you’re forced to slide over those hazelnuts, you realize just how difficult it is to line up the candies just so vs. have it happen by accident.

See, the hazelnut in the center is fine.  The one on the left and the one on the right will hit a ledge if they drop straight down.  So they need to move two over toward the center in order to be placed over an opening.

So how do you do that?

You look for (or create) one of these eight patterns:

The four on the left correspond with the hazelnut on the left.  The four on the right correspond with the hazelnut on the right.  The O is the hazelnut, and the X are three candies of the same colour.

In other words, if you want to move the left one over (toward the center, which means, toward the right), you’re looking for two blues above the hazelnut and a blue to the right.  Then you’d slide that hazelnut to the right, and the three blues align and disappear.  One move complete.

My advice is to play on a device so you can keep restarting without losing a life.  Look for a board that opens with two of the same colour below one of the hazelnuts, and either a third of the same colour to the right of the nut (if you’re trying to move the one on the left) or the left of the nut (if you’re trying to move the one on the right).  That way, your first move takes care of one of your four lateral moves.  Then it’s just three more to go.

Also make sure you use the coconut wheel early on so the nut in the middle doesn’t land atop it.  Once that happens, you can only use it left or right to take out one candy.

This moving ingredients technique comes up a few times in Candy Crush, but this is the first board where it is crucial; impossible to play without doing lateral moves.

So if you need a break from Christmas stuff and you’re feeling inclined to crouch in a darkened room somewhere playing Candy Crush while other people string their lights, this is my gift to you.  How to move ingredients to get past those evil boards.

Currently: I’m on Level 350, 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 (here are the other advice posts I’ve written). Let me know the level you’re struggling with.

At dinner last night, the ChickieNob admonished me for paying for Candy Crush.

“But I haven’t!  I haven’t bought anything on Candy Crush!  I don’t pay for it.”

(I may, or may not, have been gleefully commenting about how I’m only 6 or so levels behind a friend and catching up quickly.)

I swear that it was like encountering a mini version of myself at the dinner table.  She pursed her lips and stared at me.  “Oh, you pay,” the ChickieNob said owlishly.  “You may not pay King.com, but you pay as you drain your battery and kill your phone.  One day, you won’t have a phone and you’ll cry.  ‘How did this happen?  Why doesn’t my phone work?  Oh boo hoo, I’m so sad because I don’t have a phone anymore.’  That’s what you’ll say.”

“No, I won’t,” I insisted, uncomfortably.

“So you do pay for Candy Crush.  You pay for it… WITH YOUR PHONE.”

Oh my G-d, it was like encountering the Ghost of Christmas Future except that ghost looked like me (with more gaps between my teeth and browner hair).  I wanted to delete the app from my phone and run out of the room screaming to escape my fate.  Except that I have a horrific, crippling addiction to the game.  So, that isn’t an option.  In fact, moments earlier in the meal, when the Wolvog asked me what game I would play after I finished with Candy Crush, the answer was none.  I am not getting hooked on another drug-like game, thank you very much.  I will go back to reading books and crocheting and watching Green Day documentaries for the 6335th time.  You know, things worthy of my big brain.

The ChickieNob is right.  Candy Crush is draining my battery.  It helps to go into my apps and formally log out of it after playing.  By which I mean, while I’m waiting for the lives to regenerate so I can play some more.

She informed me that she was going to tell Grandma on me.  So here I am, turning myself in.  I am killing my phone for the sake of a match-3 game.  Oh, and I just introduced the concept of gambling via Yahtzee to the kids.

Apparently my goal is to turn us all into degenerates in 2014.