Memory Match
Turn two cards at a time. Find every matching pair in as few moves as you can.
Controls
- Keyboard
- Arrow keys move between cards, Enter or Space turns one. N deals a new game.
- Touch
- Tap a card to turn it over.
Your best score stays in this browser only. Nothing is sent anywhere. The game pauses when you switch tabs.
About Memory Match
Memory Match is the card game many people first played as children under the name Concentration or Pairs. A set of cards is laid face down, every picture appears on exactly two cards, and you turn them over two at a time to find the pairs. Our version swaps the usual fruit and animals for things an engineering student meets in the first year: a gear, an I-beam, a resistor, a capacitor, a microchip, a diode, a truss bridge, a spring, a pulley, a set square and a few more. We drew every card ourselves, and each one carries its name, so a round doubles as a quick look at the symbols you will draw in lab reports.
There are three sizes. Small is 12 cards in 6 pairs, Medium is 16 cards in 8 pairs, and Large is 24 cards in 12 pairs. The cards are shuffled and the pictures are picked at random from 14 designs every game, so no two rounds are laid out the same way.
How to play Memory Match
- Choose a size. The cards are dealt face down.
- Turn any card by clicking or tapping it. With a keyboard, move with the arrow keys and press Enter or Space.
- Turn a second card. If the two show the same picture they stay face up as a pair.
- If they differ, both turn back after a moment. Remember what you saw and where.
- Every two cards you turn count as one move. Find all the pairs to finish. Your lowest move count on each size is kept in this browser.
How to use fewer moves
The smallest possible score equals the number of pairs, and it only happens by luck. A realistic target is about one and a half times the number of pairs. The trick is to never waste information. When you turn a first card and you have already seen its partner, go straight to the partner. When you have not, turn a card you have never seen as the second card, not one you already know. That way every miss still teaches you a new card.
Work in a pattern instead of jumping around. Sweeping row by row, left to right, makes positions far easier to recall than random clicks. Some players say the names quietly as the cards turn: resistor top left, gear second row. Linking a picture to a place in words is an old memory technique, and it works here too.
Written from scratch by Imperial College of Engineering for Kaamko. No third-party code or art.
Last checked by Imperial College of Engineering. Played through on desktop and a 390px phone screen on this date.