The reason avoiding one direction works is that it tends to push all of the higher valued tiles in the direction opposite to the one you're avoiding, which groups them together and gives them more of a chance to cascade (i.e., once you get a 32, it's more likely to be right next to another 32, which is more likely to be right next to a 64, which is more likely to be next to a, 128 etc.). My strategy was to use the default pattern up-right-up-left* (with exceptions as necessary or advantageous), which also tended to group the higher pieces in the middle of the top side, which helped with the cascading. That said, I've only made it to 1024, not 2048.yayfulness wrote:I saw someone on Facebook say that the best way to win is to never use the down arrow key, so that's what I'm trying. It's hard, but I'm making progress. . . . After several hours I've determined that it's just as efficient to randomly hit the up, left, and right arrows until a yellow square shows up. It works, things don't get too gunked up, and it only takes a fraction of the time.
*Actually, I was avoiding the right direction, so my pattern was left-up-left-down, but it doesn't matter which direction you avoid so long as you're consistent.