Dear Ms. Gemstone,
I play Bejeweled Blitz. If you have a row that has almost 5 matching gems in a row with only the center gem missing, should you try to save that "set up" for a possible chance at a hyper cube? I suppose that would only be if it were a horizontal pattern. I always feel that I'm wasting the pattern to drag one of those gems to make a match of 3.
Thank you, Sophie H.

Hi Sophie,

Because Bejeweled Blitz is a one-minute game, my advice is not to go for the hypercube setup.

The reason is that your mind will be working with that setup and missing other potential moves as the timer ticks down to zero.

The way I view potential hypercubes in Bejeweled Blitz is to take advantage of them if they present themselves easily, but not to go out of the way to create them.

If you were playing the regular game of Bejeweled 2, you would be wasting the pattern to create a 3-gem match, but if you're playing Blitz, it's better to take the 3-gem match and not waste the time.

Julia G

 
 

Comment from Ellen...

"Hi Julia Gemstone,

I've been playing Bejeweled Blitz on facebook and Bejeweled Deluxe 2 for a awhile. I wonder about a couple things. One is, sometimes - a lot actually when on facebook - when I try to move a gem it won't go, it gets a little frame around it and I have to click a couple times to get it to move. Is this an issue with my mouse and how I use it? Or is this part of the game designed to drive the player batty about wasting precious seconds trying to move gems? Also, why does that guy keep saying "Go" throughout the minute? Is he trying to get you to move faster? I must admit it's rewarding when he says, "Excellent"... Another thing is, on the Deluxe 2 version Action game, what determines when a round is over? I can't figure it out."

Hi Ellen,

The "Go" is a one-time thing that happens at the beginning of a Bejeweled Blitz game, so you might be hearing "Good" after the initial "Go." A "Good" doesn't necessarily mean you'll get a multiplier gem, so it's best just to ignore it. Usually you'll get the "Good" comment after one of your gem matches causes two more. "Excellent" is mentioned when the resulting "cascades" are power gem matches or more than 3  3-gem matches, and the "incredible" happens when your move causes several more matches and greater points.

With the frame thing... are you clicking on the one gem and then clicking on the gem that you want to move it to? If so, you will make more moves faster if you left-click and hold on a gem and then drag it to where you want it to go. I've never had the non-moving gem problem, so that's the only thing I can think of.

For the Action game, your play begins with a timer which works down to zero time while you play. If you get big moves and moves with lots of points or cascading matches, the time to play goes up. If you sit there and can't find a move, the timer will go down pretty fast. So the object is to keep making moves and matching power gems and creating and using hypercubes quickly so you can keep that timer from going down to zero.

A round begins with the amount of time you have left, and it's up to you to make the moves that move that bar toward the end, so it is move and time driven, rather than getting to a certain amount of points.

You'll never run out of moves with the Action game, so if you can't find a move to make, look toward the top of the game board because the gems that fall from the top will guarantee that you have moves to make.

Julia G

 
 

Note added 10/16/2009: This message was originally written when the first Bejeweled Blitz Game was in play. With the new version, much higher scores are possible. I have had scores in the 400,000s and someone commented that she had a score of 511,000.

It is still possible to cheat, and a score of 511,000 is very rare, so scores above that may be suspect.

Julia G

Comment from DeeDee:

"It says on my score board that one of my friends got 12 MILLION some odd tonite on Blitz. Have you ever heard of that?"

Well, to be blunt, a score of 12 million is an indication that your friend cheated with a program that automatically plays the game.

I don't know if PopCap disqualifies people who cheat from receiving their weekly prizes, but IMHO, I think they should. Any score over 300,000 is suspect (I would even stretch that to 350,000, but I've never heard of a score that high).

If Blitz is ever changed to store the replay of the highest scoring game, this might be easier to detect in the future, because a "bot" would be easy to spot during a replay.

If I were you, I'd make sure your team score was over a million without your "friend's" score.

Julia G