User Guide

Blindfold Pyramid Tiles is a fully accessible puzzle inspired by Pyramid Puzzles such as Pyramid Solitaire and Toodle Tiles, for both sighted and visually impaired people, designed for rapid audio play.

In each puzzle, the tiles are laid on in several levels, where some tiles are on top of other tiles.
The goal of the puzzle is to remove pairs of matching tiles.
You can remove a tile if no other tile is on top of it, and there is no tile to both the left or the right.
Hence, if the tiles on a row are 1, 2, 3 and 4, you can remove tiles 1 and 4. You cannot remove tiles 2 and three since they have tiles touching them on both the left and right sides.

Likewise, Consider a 2 level puzzle:
The bottom level row are tiles 11,12,13, and 14.
The top level row has one tile, called tile 1, and it is directly above tile 11.
You can remove tile 14, since there’s nothing above it, and nothing to it’s right.
You can remove tile 1, since there’s nothing above it, and nothing to the left or right.
You cannot remove tile 11, since tile 1 is above it.

Types of Tiles

Depending on the game, each tile has a name or a sound.
Tiles come in either pairs of identical tiles, or groups of 4 identical tiles.

How to Play

Now that you know which tiles can be removed, you must find matching pairs to remove.
For example, if a row has the tiles 1,2,3, and 4, there are no matching pairs.
If a row has the tiles 1,2,3,1, you can remove the leftmost and rightmost tiles, since they match.
If a row has the tiles 1,1,2,3, you cannot remove any tiles, since the second tile 1 is blocked on the left and right sides.

To move around the board, swipe up, down, right and left with one finger.
Many of the puzzles have multiple levels.
You start off on the bottom level.
To move up a level, swipe up with two fingers.
If a tile is blocked because there’s another tile on both the left and right, you will hear a single dong.
If a tile is blocked because there’s a tile above it, you will hear a double dong.

Starting by finding the first tile of a pair to remove by tapping twice with one finger.
If that tile is not blocked, you will hear a kettle drum sound once every second.
If that tile is blocked, you will hear a honk, and no kettle drum sound.
Then navigate to a matching tile, and tap twice again.
If it that second tile is blocked, you will hear a honk.
Otherwise, both tiles are removed, and you score 2 points.

Gestures

To move around the board, swipe up, down, right and left with one finger.
To move up or down a level, swipe up or down with two fingers.
To start removing a pair of tiles, tap twice with one finger when you have located the first tile.
To remove the pair, find the second tile and tap twice again.
To cancel the first tile, and search for a different first tile, tap three times.

As you move up levels in the puzzle, the higher level tends to start one row down and one column to the right of the lower level.
To jump to the upper left corner of a level, swipe right with 2 fingers.

When you are positioned on a tile, swipe right with 3 fingers to hear the locations of all matching tiles.
To hear your score and number of matches still available, swipe down with 3 fingers.
To undo a match, swipe left with 3 fingers.

Difficulty Ratings

The VERY EASY game puts makes almost all matching pairs available for removal, with few other tiles blocking them.
The EASY game makes about two-thirds of the matching pairs available for removal.
The MEDIUM game makes about one third of the matching pairs available for removal.
The HARD game distributes the pairs randomly, and you may find that some games don’t let you remove every tile.

In the MEDIUM and HARD games, clearing all the tiles is not as easy as it first appears.
You may match the wrong pairs and find yourself in a position where there are no matching tiles that are free.
You can undo a match by swiping left with 3 fingers, and find a different pair to remove, but there is a one point penalty.

Try to look ahead as many moves as possible.
There will be pairs that you remove that expose more choices than other pairs would expose.

Focus on tall tiers and long rows.

Game Varieties

Start with the One Level, 6 by 6 game.
When you start playing, you can match tiles on the left column or right column, since they don’t have any tiles to the left or right, respectively.

Once you’ve mastered that game, move to One Level, 10 by 10 game. It’s a little harder. Also experiment with EASY, MEDIUM and HARD game ratings.

The Two level, 10 by 10, 6 by 6 game teaches you have to move between levels, and find matching pairs between levels.
Next, attempt the Three level, 10 by 10, 6 by 6 and 4 by 4 game.
Finally, move to the Four level game, and try making the game more and more diffcult.

When you are feel confident, solve the Mahjong puzzle game. It is described in the Mahjong guide.
It has a different layout entirely, and introduces some new concepts, such as a single tile blocking two or four tiles.

Scoring

You get 2 points for each pair of tiles that you remove.
The game is over when you’ve removed all tiles, or there are no more pairs available to be removed.
When you undo a move, you lose 3 points: 2 points for the removed match, and a one point penalty.

To post your winning score to twitter or facebook, tap twice with 2 fingers after the game is over.
Use the settings screen to specify which social network to use.

Mahjong Puzzle

The mahjong puzzle uses 144 tiles which is the number of tiles used in the game of Mahjong.
In this game, there are 5 levels of tiles, but it is not shaped like a pyramid.
It is similar to the Toodle Tile puzzle available under Windows.
There are 34 groups of 4 identical tiles, and 4 groups of 2 identical tiles.

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Playing this game is similar to the pyramid games, except a single tile can also be centered between two tiles.

To understand this better, consider a 3 level puzzle:
Bottom level row are tiles 21, 22, 23, and 24.
Middle level row has tile 11 directly above tile 21, and tile 12 directly above tile 22.
Top level row has tile 1 centered between tiles 11 and 12.
One tile can be positioned bewteen two tiles, in a pyramid.

You can remove tile 1, since nothing is above it.
You cannot remove tiles 11 or 12, since tile 1 is above it.
You cannot remove tiles 21 and 22, since there are tiles above it.
You cannot remove tile 23 since there’s a tile to both it’s right and it’s left.
You can, however, remove tile 24 since there’s nothing to it’s right.

This will be described more in the Board Layout section.

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Board layout

The tiles are stacked in levels:
the bottom level, level 1, has 87 tiles,
the second level has 36 tiles,
the third level has 16 tiles,
the fourth level has 4 tiles
and the top, or fifth level, has 1 tile.

The first levels contains 87 tiles, and they are arranged in eight rows with varying numbers of columns in each row.
The first and eighth row contain 12 tiles.
The second and seventh row contain eight tiles.
The third and sixth row contain 10 tiles.

The fourth and fifth row contain 12 tiles, but there is a twist.
In addition to the 12 columns of tiles, there is an extra tile on the left side between the fourth and fifth row,
and there are two tiles on the right side between these two rows.
In order to make the tiles on the left side of row four or five free, you must clear this extra tile.

This one tile is locate at two positions on the board, at both A,4, and A,5.
Hence this one tile is blocking two rows: row 4 and row 5.
They are called sister tiles.
If you remove one sister tile, the other one magically disappears as well.

Likewise, there are two sets of sister tiles at the right end of row four and row five.
Both sets of tiles must be removed to start removing from the right side of rows four and five.

The rightmost sister tiles are at positions O,4 and O,5.
The other sister tile is at position N,4 and N,5.
When you remove either O,4 or O, 5, it’s sister tile will magically disappear.
Likewise when remove either N,4 or N,5, it’s sister tile will magically disappear.

The top level, level 5, has a tile in the center, above positions G,4, H,4, G,5, and H,5.
These 4 sister tiles are blocking those 4 tiles in level 4.
Hence, to access tiles G,4, or H,4, or G,5, and or H,5 in level 4, you must first remove one sister tile in level 5.
When you clear out any one of the sisters tiles on level 5, all four sister tiles on level 5 disappear.