2048 on 5x5 and 6x6 boards: how big can you go?

The four boards at a glance

Every size plays by the same rules as the classic game: each swipe slides every tile, two equal tiles that meet merge into one of twice the value, and a new 2 or 4 appears after each move. What changes is the number of squares, and that changes everything about how a game feels.

The goals go up with the board because 2048 on a 6×6 board is no challenge at all: there is so much room that a steady player hardly ever gets stuck. The 3×3 goal goes down to 256 for the opposite reason.

Why a bigger tile takes so many moves

Every move adds exactly one new tile, a 2 nine times out of ten and a 4 otherwise, so on average each move puts 2.2 on the board. Merging never adds or removes value: two 64s become one 128. So the numbers on the board always add up to roughly 2.2 times the number of moves you have made.

That gives a simple rule of thumb: to make a tile, you need about the tile's value divided by 2.2 moves, and a little more, because the rest of the board holds value too. A 2048 takes around 1,000 moves, a 4096 around 2,000 and an 8192 around 3,800. When we let the game's own computer player loose on the bigger boards, it made 4096 in 1,950 to 2,100 moves and 8192 in 3,900 to 4,500, which matches the sum.

The highest tile each board can hold

To make the biggest tile a board allows, every square has to hold a different power of two in a perfect snake, and then the right new tile has to appear in the right place. Picture a full 4×4 board holding 65,536, 32,768 and so on all the way down to 8 and 4, plus one more 4 that has just appeared beside the first. Swipe, and the two 4s make an 8, which meets the 8 and makes 16, and so on up the snake until the last merge makes 131,072.

The same argument works for any square board: with s squares, the highest possible tile is 2^s+1. That is 2¹⁰ = 1,024 on 3×3, 2¹⁷ = 131,072 on 4×4, 2²⁶ on 5×5 and 2³⁷ on 6×6. These are limits on paper. Nobody reaches the 5×5 or 6×6 limits in practice, because a game would need many millions of moves.

How to play the 3×3 board

Nine squares leave almost no room for mistakes. A 128 and a 64 already take a third of the board, and one new tile in the wrong place can end the game. Even a careful computer player that looks ahead makes 256 in only about four games out of ten.

• Corner and row, still. Keep the biggest tile in a corner and the next two beside it in falling order, just as on 4×4.
• Merge small tiles at once. On a big board you can leave a pair of 2s for later. On 3×3 every empty square counts, so merge pairs as soon as they meet.
• Count empty squares, not points. With two or fewer empty squares, take the move that frees space even if it looks untidy.
• Think one tile ahead. Before each swipe, look at where the new tile could land. If one of the empty squares would be a disaster, pick the move that leaves a different square empty.

3×3 is the best board for practising the end of a 4×4 game, where the last few free squares decide everything, because every 3×3 game feels like that from the first minute.

How to play 5×5 and 6×6

On the big boards the danger is not running out of room. It is getting careless, because the board forgives so much for so long. Most lost games on 5×5 and 6×6 are lost to a scattered board after hundreds of untidy moves.

1. Pick a corner on move one, exactly as you would on 4×4. The corner strategy is just as strong here, and it is what stops a long game drifting.
2. Build a snake along the long edge. Your top row now has five or six squares, so the snake can hold more tiles in order before it turns back on the second row.
3. Use the far rows as a workshop. The bottom two rows are where new tiles arrive. Build small tiles up there and send them towards the snake's tail only when they are big enough to merge.
4. Keep one building site. With so much room it is tempting to build a 256 here and another there. Two big tiles far apart can only meet by wrecking the board, so build every new tile next to the tail of the snake.
5. Take breaks. A game of several thousand moves is long, and tired thumbs make the swipe away from the corner that undoes an hour of work.

Playing the bigger boards in Yuzool's 2048

In Yuzool's 2048, tap Board to switch sizes. Each board keeps its own saved game, best score and best tile, so a long 6×6 game waits for you while you play a quick 4×4. The 3×3 and the classic 4×4 boards are free for ever. The 5×5 and 6×6 boards come with 2048 Pro, a single $1.99 payment that also brings unlimited undo and three more tile themes, and every device gets three free tries of the Pro features (shared between them) before deciding. Whatever the size, the game carries on after the goal: tap Keep going and aim for the next tile up.