Strategy & Rules

If you’re stuck trying to figure out how to solve a Speed Square puzzle, this article will walk you through a basic strategy. It also provides some more details about Speed Square’s rules and some advanced tips.

Corner Solve Strategy

Here is a sample puzzle that we’ll solve:

Here is a YouTube video demoing the strategy we’ll discuss with commentary. You can watch this video, or you can follow along below it where I describe the strategy with text and images.

One reliable way to solve a Speed Square puzzle is to build from a corner, as we saw in the above video. We’ll solve the 2×2 upper left corner first:

It doesn’t matter what colors you solve this corner with. Simply move any two colors into the two columns in that corner. We’ll choose orange and pink:

Next, we’ll solve the 3×3 upper left corner:

When doing this solve, we need to be careful not to undo the work we did solving the 2×2 corner. So, we should not to move the tiles below that corner up or down, unless doing so will immediately solve the 3×3 column:

Similarly, we shouldn’t move tiles to the right of the solved corner horizontally:

The above two suggestions can basically be summarized as: don’t move the tiles that are already solved, unless doing so won’t break the 2×2 solve.

Using the above rules, we are able to solve the 3×3 upper left corner:

Next, we will apply the same rules to solve the 4×4 upper left corner:

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After solving the 4×4 upper left corner, we’re left with this.

We will repeat the steps once again to solve the 5×5 upper left corner:

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After solving the 5×5 upper left corner, we’re left with this.

Finally, we can solve the rest of the puzzle. To do this, we will use the final column to arrange the colors that will make up the final row in the correct order. Again, we should only move the final column vertically and the final row horizontally in order to avoid undoing the 5×5 corner we already solved. The puzzle should look like this:

Finally, we can move the colors in the last column into the last row one at a time to solve the puzzle:

Dealing with Numbers

While the above strategy will work well for Quick Play and some easier levels, harder levels have numbered tiles which have a limit on how many times they can be moved. If those limits are low enough, they’ll make it impossible to use the strategy above.

These more complicated levels require a lot of strategic thinking and won’t have a one-solution-fits-all approach. Here are a few tips that may be helpful:

1. You can still follow the general strategy of solving some parts of the board first, then not moving those parts once they’re solved. You’ll just have to give more thought to which parts you want to solve first instead of always starting with a corner.
2. If you’ve been stuck on a level for a long time, you can use Swap Power-Ups to help get unstuck. These are discussed more below.
3. The level will be the same each time you play it, so if you get stuck or make a mistake you can restart the level using the restart button in the upper right corner.

Swap Power-Ups

If you’ve been stuck on a level for a long time or want to improve your solve time, you can try using Swap Power-Ups. A Swap Power-Up can be activated with the large blue button on the bottom of the screen. Once activated, you can tap two tiles on the board to switch them.

In many situations, using Swaps is more efficient than moving entire rows/columns, but you can only use up to 2 Swaps per game so you can’t solve the entire puzzle this way. You also have a limited number of total Swaps in your inventory, but you can get more from the Shop if you run out.

Here is a demo of using a Swap:

Game Center Leaderboards

All Speed Square players can compete on the Game Center leaderboards by playing Quick Play or Levels mode. There are six Game Center leaderboards to compete on:

1. Quick Play Fastest Time
2. Easy Levels Complete
3. Medium Levels Complete
4. Hard Levels Complete
5. Expert Levels Complete
6. Stars Earned

For the Quick Play Fastest Time leaderboard, your score will only be uploaded if you don’t pause the game. Note that the game is paused if you close the app, but it isn’t paused if you use a Swap Power-Up.

Also, note that the timer will not start until two seconds after the game begins or you make the first move, whichever comes first. This gives players a bit of time to analyze the board without impacting their solve time, and is a rule inspired by the Speed Cubing rules.

Lastly, note that the stars earned are based on the time the puzzle was solved.

• Under 30 seconds = 3 stars
• Under 2 minutes = 2 stars
• Over 2 minutes = 1 star
• (Ran out of moves = 0 stars)

Conclusion

Hopefully you found this guide useful. If you have any further questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us.