How to Play 6 Club

The board and the goal

A run of 6 Club starts with a seven-by-seven grid holding six kinds of jewel: Topaz, Sapphire, Ruby, Emerald, Amethyst and Pearl. You have thirty moves. Every move is a swap between two neighbouring jewels, and your score at the end of the thirtieth move is the result of the run. That score then joins your lifetime total, which is what lifts you through the VIP levels.

Making a swap

1. Touch a jewel and slide your finger toward the neighbour you want to trade places with, or
2. Tap one jewel (it lifts and glows), then tap a neighbour beside it, above it or below it.
3. On a keyboard, the arrow keys move a white frame around the board and Enter picks a jewel.

The swap only stands if it leaves three or more jewels of one colour connected. Otherwise the pair slides back with a small shake and your move counter does not change, so experimenting is free.

Connected in any direction

Two jewels of the same colour are connected when they touch in any of the eight directions: left, right, up, down, or corner to corner. A group is every jewel you can reach from one to the next that way, so a diagonal chain, a zigzag, an L or a solid cluster all count. When a group reaches three, the whole group clears at once.

Bigger groups, bigger points

Each jewel in a group is worth 10 points for every jewel beyond the second, so the value of every single jewel rises as the group grows:

Falling, waves and cascades

After a group clears, everything above the gap drops down and new jewels fall in from the top. New jewels never form a group on their own, but jewels that slide into fresh positions often do, and those groups clear without another move from you. Each of those automatic rounds is a wave. There is no limit: the cascade keeps rolling until nothing on the board is connected any more, which can take dozens of waves.

Every wave also lifts the multiplier one step, x1 for your swap, x2 for the next wave and so on up to x6, where it stays for the rest of the cascade. The six bars above the board light up as it climbs. Any single wave that clears six or more jewels adds a flat Six Burst bonus of 60 points. Long cascades speed up as they run, a small badge shows the wave number, and Skip jumps straight to the settled board.

Bolts and Six Stars

Bolt (a group of six or seven)

Clear six or seven connected jewels in one go and one of them stays behind with glowing stripes. A group that spreads wider than it is tall gives a row Bolt; a taller one gives a column Bolt. The next time that jewel clears, it sweeps its entire row or column, at 10 points per extra jewel.

Six Star (a group of eight or more)

Eight or more connected jewels of one colour leave a Six Star with a turning rainbow ring. Swap it with any neighbour and every jewel of that neighbour's colour leaves the board. Swap two Stars together and the whole board clears. A Star caught in an ordinary group wipes its own colour instead.

Hints, reshuffles and saving

• Hint: three per run. The two jewels of the swap that makes the biggest group pulse until you move.
• Reshuffle: automatic and free whenever the board has no legal swap left.
• Save: the run is stored after each move, so a closed tab or a dead battery costs nothing.
• New run: tap it twice during a run to start over; a finished run starts fresh with one tap.

Ten habits of high scorers

1. Look at the bottom rows first. Clears down there send whole columns sliding, which is what starts long cascades.
2. Before swapping, count every jewel the moved one will touch, corners included: two small pairs can join into a big group.
3. Keep a Bolt next to a matching pair; one swap then fires it inside a fresh group.
4. Save a Six Star for the colour that covers the most cells, usually late in a run.
5. Two Stars side by side are worth more than any single group. Plan for them when you can.
6. Diagonal neighbours are easy to miss. Scan corner to corner before you decide a jewel stands alone.
7. Use a hint early when you are stuck, not at the end when moves matter less.
8. Watch the move counter turn red at five; that is the time to spend your Stars.
9. Do not chase a single big swap for long. A steady stream of threes also builds VIP points.
10. Redeem the daily gift code at the start of a run, not the end.