# What's the Optimum Strategy for these Flash Games

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-optimum-strategy-for-these-flash-games/510758>\
**Category:** The Game Room\
**Created:** [September 19, 2009, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-optimum-strategy-for-these-flash-games/510758 "2009-09-19T23:21:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![hobscrk777](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a6a055/32.png) [@hobscrk777](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hobscrk777)\
**Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-optimum-strategy-for-these-flash-games/510758/1 "2009-09-19T23:21:30Z")

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I’m talking about the games where you essentially have a gird of blocks of various colors. The object is to either select a block, which removes all adjacent blocks of the same color, or to swap a block with an adjacent block to complete three (or more) in a row, removing them from the board. It seems like there must be some algorithm here for top performance.

Here are some links to various games that fall into this category.

[http://www.addictinggames.com/blocks.html](http://www.addictinggames.com/blocks.html)  
[http://www.addictinggames.com/bejeweled2.html](http://www.addictinggames.com/bejeweled2.html)  
[http://www.addictinggames.com/crashdown.html](http://www.addictinggames.com/crashdown.html)  
[http://www.2flashgames.com/f/f-454.htm](http://www.2flashgames.com/f/f-454.htm)

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**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-optimum-strategy-for-these-flash-games/510758/2 "2009-09-23T20:35:41Z")

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No answer, but I think a game that combined those two functions might be quite fun

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-optimum-strategy-for-these-flash-games/510758/3 "2009-09-23T23:06:49Z")

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For the select-a-block ones, if I’m thinking of the same sort of thing you are, the score for each cluster of blocks scales nonlinearly with the number of blocks in the cluster. For instance, a bit of just two blocks might be a single point, but 10 blocks all together might be worth 81 points, and . In this case, what you want to do is pick one color, and click around that color in such a way as to get as huge a cluster as possible, then when you can’t get it any bigger, get the big points from it.