How to Play Memory
Memory, also called Concentration, deals a grid of face-down cards in which every picture appears exactly twice. Click or tap a card to turn it over, then turn a second one. If the two animals match, both cards stay face up and turn green; if they don't, you get a short look at both before they flip back over. The game ends when every pair has been found.
Each pair of flips counts as one move, and the move counter is your score: the fewer moves you need, the better. Choose Easy (8 pairs on a 4×4 grid), Medium (12 pairs on a 4×6 grid) or Hard (16 pairs on a 4×8 grid). Every deal is freshly shuffled, so card positions are never the same twice, and clicking a size button at any time deals a new board.
Strategy Tips
- Always open with an unknown card - turning over a card you've already seen as your first flip tells you nothing new. Start each move with a fresh card so that either it matches something you remember, or you learn a new position.
- Use your second flip to explore - if your first card has no remembered partner, flip another unseen card rather than a known one. You can't make a match either way, but a new card adds information and gives you a chance at a lucky pair.
- Cash in known pairs immediately - the moment you know where both cards of a pair are, take them. It costs one move whenever you do it, and clearing them early leaves fewer positions to hold in your head.
- Sweep the grid in order - explore row by row from the top-left instead of clicking at random. A predictable path means you remember positions as "row two, third card" rather than as a vague spot on the screen.
- Name what you see - quietly saying "fox, top corner" fixes a card far better than just glancing at it. Watch for look-alikes such as the mouse and hamster or the tiger and lion, which are easy to mix up on the larger grids.
Read the full Memory guide →
Playing Memory on PlayVersusAI
The classic card-matching game, played solo against your own memory. Every card shows an animal, and each deal is a fresh random shuffle, so nothing carries over from one game to the next. Turn over two cards per move; a matching pair stays face up and turns green, while a mismatch stays visible for just under a second before both cards flip back. Clicks made during that pause are ignored, so there is no way to sneak a third card in.
Your score is the number of moves, where a move is one pair of flips, matched or not. The Pairs box shows your progress, the Best box shows the lowest move count you have recorded in this browser, and the finishing screen also reports how long the game took. Completed games are submitted to the global leaderboard, which ranks Memory by fewest moves. It works with a mouse or a tap on touchscreens; there are no keyboard controls.
What's on This Page
- Three difficulty levels — Easy, Medium and Hard, chosen with the buttons above the board. Changing level starts a fresh game.
- High-score table — lowest move counts are ranked on the global leaderboard when you are signed in.
- No account required — the full game is playable as a guest, on desktop, tablet or phone.
Difficulty only changes how many cards are dealt. Easy is 8 pairs on a 4x4 grid, Medium is 12 pairs on 4x6, and Hard is 16 pairs on 4x8. The rules, the flip-back pause and the scoring are the same at every size, but each extra pair adds two more positions to remember and more animals that look alike.
Mistakes That Lose Games
- Opening a move with a card you have already seen. Unless you are collecting a pair you know, the first flip should always be an unknown card, because a known card tells you nothing new.
- Flipping a remembered card as your second choice "just to check". If your first card has no known partner, a second unseen card adds information; a known one wastes the move.
- Clicking randomly around the grid. Without a consistent scanning order, positions blur together and you end up re-flipping cards you have already seen.
- Leaving known pairs for later. Collecting a pair costs one move whenever you do it, so take it at once and free up the memory for the cards still in play.
Memory Questions
What counts as a move?
Each time you turn over a second card, one move is added, whether the two cards match or not. A full game therefore takes at least as many moves as there are pairs: 8 on Easy, 12 on Medium and 16 on Hard.
Are the cards shuffled differently every game?
Yes. Every deal is a new random shuffle of the cards for the size you chose, so you cannot learn a fixed layout.
Is there a time limit?
No. Your time is shown on the finishing screen for reference, but the score and the leaderboard are based purely on moves, so you can take as long as you like to think.
For the complete rules, the deeper strategy and the history of the game, read the full Memory guide, or browse guides for all 33 games.