MyRin Flip Match: How to Win the Pairs Memory Game

Flip Match is the pairs game everyone played as a child, with one twist that changes the strategy: there is no preview. Every card starts face-down, and every position you know, you learned by flipping. Players who flip at random clear the board eventually. Players who flip in the right order, and remember by region instead of by coordinate, clear it in far fewer taps. This guide covers both.

Flip Match

Flip Match is a MyRin memory game in which pairs of cards start face-down on a grid that grows with each level, and the player flips two cards per turn, keeping matches open, with the goal of clearing the board in the fewest possible taps.

How to play Flip Match: the direct answer

Tap any card to flip it face-up, then tap a second card. If they match, both stay open. If not, both flip back after a short pause. You clear the level by matching every pair, and your score depends on doing it in the fewest taps. Unlike Memory Match, which shows every card for a few seconds first, Flip Match never gives you a preview.

The flipping order that wastes the fewest taps

Every turn costs two taps, so the question is always the same: how do I get the most information, or a guaranteed pair, from those two taps? This order does it:

1. If you already know where a pair is, take it. Two taps, one pair, no risk.
2. Otherwise, flip a card you have never seen. This first flip is pure information.
3. If its partner is a card you have seen before, flip that one. Guaranteed pair.
4. If not, flip another unseen card, never a known one. A known card cannot match the new card, so flipping it teaches you nothing. An unseen card might match by luck, and if it does not, you have learned one more position.

Step 4 is where most players lose taps. The instinct after a new card is to "check" a known card, and it is always a wasted flip. The game's own strategy notes call these first flips "reconnaissance": when you do not know where a match is, spend the flip on a card that will tell you something.

The quadrant method: remembering by region

The grid in Flip Match grows as you advance, and remembering every card as an exact row and column quickly overflows. Short-term memory is limited: Nelson Cowan's review of the research puts the capacity at around four chunks of information at a time (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2001). Trying to hold twelve separate coordinates works against that limit.

The quadrant method works with it:

• Split the grid into four regions mentally: top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right.
• Remember cards by region first. "The star is top-right" is one chunk and usually enough to find it again in two taps or fewer.
• Refine only when you need to. When two cards you remember are in the same region, add the detail: "star top-right, corner".

Spatial grouping like this is easier to hold than a flat list of positions, and it degrades gracefully: even when you forget the exact card, you rarely forget the region.

Say it, then see it

After a non-match, name both cards and their positions silently before they flip back: "diamond, top-left; moon, bottom-right". Pairing a verbal label with the visual position gives the memory two routes back, and the pause before the cards turn over is long enough to do it. This is the same principle behind the difference between working memory and short-term memory: holding information is not the same as actively using it, and naming is a way of using it.

Common mistakes

• Re-flipping known cards. Covered above, and the single biggest source of wasted taps.
• Rushing the second flip. The pause after a non-match is study time. Use it to encode both positions before they disappear.
• Remembering pictures instead of places. You will recognise the star when you see it again; what you need to remember is where it was. Encode the location, not the image.
• Ignoring the edges. Corner and edge positions tend to be easier to remember than central ones, so flip central cards early, while your memory is still uncluttered.

What Flip Match trains

Flip Match exercises visuospatial working memory: holding the positions of things you have seen and updating them as the board changes. As with every brain game, you will improve at Flip Match much faster than at memory in general, and claims of broad cognitive gains from memory games are not well supported, as discussed in does brain training work. The honest reason to play is that it is a satisfying puzzle and a clean test of a skill you use every day.

MyRin is free on iOS and Android with 30 games and 18,000 levels; Flip Match is one of the games you can also play free in the browser on the MyRin games page.

FAQ

How do you play Flip Match in MyRin?

All cards start face-down. Tap one card to flip it, then a second. If they match, both stay open; if not, both flip back after a short pause. The goal is to clear the board by matching every pair in the fewest taps, which means remembering every card you have seen.

What is the difference between Flip Match and Memory Match?

Memory Match, based on the Heian court game kai-awase, shows every card face-up for a few seconds at the start of each round. Flip Match gives no preview at all: everything you know about the board comes from your own flips, so the order in which you flip matters more.

Which card should I flip first?

Flip a card you have never seen. If its partner is one you have already seen, flip that one and take the pair. If not, flip a second unseen card rather than a known one: a known card cannot match and teaches you nothing, while an unseen card might match and at least adds information.

How can I remember more card positions?

Divide the grid into four quadrants and remember cards by region first, then by exact position. Short-term memory holds only a few chunks at once, around four according to research by Nelson Cowan, so grouping positions into four regions works with that limit instead of against it. Naming cards silently as you flip them also helps.