Memory Game

Memory, also called Concentration or Pairs, is played with every card face down. Turn over two. If they show the same picture they stay face up; if not, take a look and they turn back over. Keep going until every pair is found. The skill is remembering where each picture was, so that the second card of a pair can be turned over the moment you see the first.

Every turn of two cards counts as one move, whether or not it makes a match, so the score is how efficiently you remembered — not how fast you clicked. A perfect game, with no wasted turns at all, takes exactly as many moves as there are pairs: 8 on the 4 × 4 board and 18 on the 6 × 6. That only happens with luck, because you have to see a card before you can remember it. Your best game for each board size is kept on this device, ranked by fewest moves and then by the faster time; the clock starts with your first card.

You do not have to wait for a mismatched pair to turn back: the cards stay up for about a second, but clicking the next card turns them over immediately. Each new game is shuffled at random. If your system asks for reduced motion, the cards change face instantly instead of flipping. Every card can be reached with the keyboard, and a screen reader announces what each card shows once it is turned over, along with each match and the final score.