How to Play 2048
Pick a direction and every tile slides that way until it hits a wall or another tile. Two tiles with the same number that collide become one tile of twice the value, and each tile may merge only once per move. A new 2 or 4 then appears in a free cell. You win by making 2048; you lose when the board is full and no two neighbours match.
The rules, step by step
- 1Start with two tilesA new board opens with two tiles in random cells. Each one is a 2 nine times out of ten and a 4 the other time, drawn independently.
- 2Slide the whole boardPick up, down, left or right. Every tile travels as far as it can in that direction, closing every gap in front of it before anything else happens.
- 3Equal tiles that meet fuseTwo tiles showing the same number become a single tile showing their sum, and you score that sum. A tile may take part in only one merge per move.
- 4Merges resolve from the direction of travelThe pair nearest the wall you are pushing towards fuses first, so a row of four 2s slid left becomes two 4s rather than a single 8.
- 5A new tile appears after every real moveOne tile, in a free cell chosen at random, a 2 or a 4. It only appears if the move changed something: a direction that moves nothing costs nothing.
- 6Make 2048 to win, then carry onReaching the target wins the game and the board keeps playing if you want it to. The game is over only when the grid is full and no two neighbours match.
Try it — the rules above, running
New game deals a fresh board at the size you last chose, Undo walks back up to 24 moves, and Hint searches the position and lights up the direction it would play, with its reason in the status line. A direction that cannot move anything does nothing at all — no new tile, no move counted — so pressing into a wall is free. The three-dot menu holds today’s shared game and the 3 × 3, 4 × 4 and 5 × 5 boards.
Your statistics · 4 × 4
- Played
- 0
- Won
- 0
- Win rate
- 0%
- Streak
- 0
- Best streak
- 0
- Best time
- —
- Best score
- —
A game is recorded when it ends — when no tile can move, or when you start another one. It counts as a win if you made 2048 at any point, so the win rate is how often you got there and the best score is what the game finished on.
This board
The standard board: sixteen cells, a 2048 target and a ceiling of 131,072 for anyone who keeps going afterwards.
The last tile appeared at row 3, column 4. Every board is a pure function of its number, so game #1 is the same game on any device.
Keyboard
- Arrows
- Slide every tile that way
- W A S D
- The same four directions
- U
- Undo one move
- H
- Hint
- N
- New game
- F
- Full screen
What happens on a single move?
- 1Everything slidesEvery tile travels as far as it can in the direction you chose. Gaps close first — two tiles at opposite ends of an otherwise empty row do meet.
- 2Equal tiles fuse, once eachPairs resolve starting from the wall you are pushing towards. A tile created by a merge is finished for the move and cannot merge again until the next one.
- 3You score the tile you madeA merge pays exactly the face value of the new tile. Two 64s pay 128. Sliding without merging pays nothing.
- 4One new tile arrivesIn a free cell chosen at random: a 2 nine times in ten, a 4 the other time. This step is skipped entirely if nothing moved.
How do you not lose?
You lose when the grid is full and no two neighbouring tiles match — so the thing to protect is not your score, it is your free cells. Every merge you make gives one back and every move costs one, which means a move that merges nothing is a move that brings the end closer.
- Anchor a corner. Biggest tile in a corner, and use the three directions that cannot move it.
- Keep one row ordered. Decreasing away from the corner, so it can be collapsed a merge at a time.
- Avoid the fourth direction. The one that lifts your anchor row is the one that ruins boards.
- Merge before you are forced to. Below three free cells you are playing reactively, and reactive play is where the fourth direction becomes unavoidable.
What do the numbers behind the game look like?
| Question | Answer | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Chance a new tile is a 4 | 10% | 175,138 spawns of real play, counted |
| Chance a game opens on two 4s | About 1 in 100 | 548 of 50,000 seeded openings |
| Fewest possible moves to a 2048 | 510 | 2,048 ÷ 4, less the two opening tiles |
| Score of a 2048 built from 2s | 20,480 | v × (log₂ v − 1), 1,023 merges |
| Highest tile on a 4 × 4 board | 131,072 | 2^(n² + 1) with n = 4 |
The 510-move floor follows from one observation: merging never changes the total of the numbers on the board, so the board's total is exactly the total of every tile you have ever been given. Nobody gets near the floor — it needs every single spawn to be a 4, which happens one time in ten.
Which board size should you play?
Start on 4 × 4, the standard board this game is named for. Move to 5 × 5 if you want a longer, calmer build — nine extra cells push the ceiling to 67,108,864 and make 2048 far more reliable rather than faster: at the same two-ply setting that wins only five 4 × 4 boards in sixteen, the search reached 2048 on all six 5 × 5 boards it was given — but it took between 976 and 1,688 moves to do it, because there are nine more cells to fill on the way. Take 3 × 3 only when you want to be beaten: nine cells put the ceiling at 1,024, so 2048 is mathematically out of reach there and the small board asks for 512 instead.
If you enjoy the deduction more than the scramble, sudoku and minesweeper sit next door and neither has any randomness in it at all once the board is dealt.
How do you win more often?
- Pick a corner and never let it moveKeep your biggest tile in one corner and use only the three directions that cannot dislodge it. The moment the big tile leaves the corner it cuts the board in half, and the halves cannot reach each other to merge.
- Build one row into a ladderFill the row along your chosen corner with numbers that only ever decrease away from it — 512, 256, 128, 64. A row in order can be collapsed one merge at a time; a row out of order has to be unpicked first, and there is rarely room.
- Never press the one direction that empties your anchor rowWith the corner at the bottom left, up is the move that lifts the bottom row and lets a fresh tile slide underneath your ladder. Play left, down and right only, and take up as a last resort you have thought about.
- Watch the free-cell count, not the scoreFree cells are the only resource that can actually run out — the score cannot kill you. Below three free cells, stop building and spend a move opening space, even a move that merges nothing.
- Feed the small tiles inwardsStranded 2s and 4s at the far end of the board are what eventually fill it. Keep merging them towards the ladder rather than leaving them parked, because a 2 next to a 512 is a cell you have lost for the rest of the game.
Common questions about 2048
- Does 2 2 2 2 slid left make an 8?
- No. It makes two 4s. The pair nearest the left wall fuses first and the 4 it creates is finished for that move, so the second pair fuses behind it rather than into it.
- Can a tile merge twice in one move?
- Never. One merge per tile per move is the rule, and it applies to both halves of the pair and to the tile they produce. Without it a full row would collapse to a single tile and the game would be trivial.
- Does undo cost anything in 2048?
- Not here. Undo walks back up to 24 positions and the score goes back with it. Because the tile sequence is fixed by the game's seed, replaying a move you took back deals the same tile it dealt the first time.
- What is a good score in 2048?
- Around twenty thousand points, because the target tile alone is worth 20,480 if it was built from 2s. In the seeded self-play runs behind this page, the score at the moment 2048 first appeared ranged from 20,652 to 24,348. Beyond that, a 4096 built the same way is worth 45,056, which is the natural next goal.
Ready to stop reading? Play 2048 on the full board, with controls and statistics tailored to that game.