Guides · Memory Match · 6 min read · 16 October 2026

How many moves is a good Memory Match score?

You finish a game of Memory Match on Easy in 15 moves. Is that good? Without something to compare it to, it is hard to say. So we worked it out: what a player with a perfect memory would score, what a player who can only hold a few cards in their head would score, and what that means for how you play.

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The floor and the ceiling

A move is two cards turned. The board has one pair for every two cards: 8 pairs on Easy (16 cards), 12 on Medium (24) and 18 on Hard (36).

The absolute minimum is one move per pair - turning both halves of every pair right away, every time. That only happens by luck. Nobody can plan it, because at the start you know nothing about the cards. The real question is what a very good player gets on average.

What a perfect memory scores

Imagine a player who never forgets a card they have seen and plays the obvious strategy:

1. If you already know where both cards of a pair are, take that pair.
2. Otherwise turn a card you have never seen. If you know where its partner is, turn the partner.
3. If not, turn another card you have never seen, and remember both.

We simulated 200,000 games at each level with exactly that player:

That agrees with the mathematics. Mathematicians have studied this exact game (it is often called Concentration), and with perfect memory the average number of moves works out to about 1.61 per pair, minus half a move. For 8 pairs that is 12.4; for 18 pairs, 28.5. In other words, even a flawless memory costs you around six extra tenths of a move for every pair, purely because you have to turn cards you have never seen.

So on Easy, 12 or 13 moves is essentially perfect play. On Hard, anything around 29 is the best you can expect without luck.

What a normal memory scores

Nobody has a perfect memory. A more realistic player remembers the last few cards they have seen and forgets older ones. We simulated that too, with a player who can hold a fixed number of cards in mind:

This is the most interesting table in the article, and it explains a lot about how the three levels feel.

• Easy is a game anyone can play almost perfectly. Remembering six cards gets you within a fraction of a move of perfect play.
• Medium is where memory starts to matter. Six cards in mind gives about 21 moves; you need eight or more to get close to 19.
• Hard punishes forgetting. Remembering six cards costs you about eleven moves over perfect play. Remembering only four doubles your score.

Estimates of how many things we can hold in short-term memory usually land somewhere between four and seven. That puts most of us right on the steep part of the Hard column, which is exactly why Hard feels so much harder than its size suggests. It is not 50% more cards than Medium; it is more cards than fit in your head.

How to remember more cards

The good news is that “cards remembered” is not a fixed number. A few techniques raise it a lot:

• Turn cards in order. Sweep the board row by row instead of jumping around. You then remember positions as “third in the second row” rather than as a scatter of locations, and the order itself is a memory aid.
• Name the pictures. Saying “fox, top left” in your head is far easier to recall than a picture. Every picture on Lynxy differs in outline as well as colour, so even a glance gives you something to name.
• Make tiny stories. “The fox is sitting next to the boat” links two cards into one memory. One story for two cards effectively doubles your capacity.
• Use the corners. Corners and edges are easier to remember than the middle of a board. When you have a free choice, turn the cards whose position is easy to describe.

The first card is never wasted

One rule from the perfect player's strategy is worth copying exactly: when you turn a card you have never seen and you do not know its partner, the second card should also be one you have never seen. Turning a card you already know “just to check” tells you nothing new. A fresh second card either matches by luck or adds one more card to your memory, and both of those are better than nothing.

The flip side: when the first card you turn matches one you have seen before, stop and think before you tap. The partner is there, and finding it costs nothing but a moment's concentration. Rushing that second tap is the easiest way to throw a move away.

A word about hints

Memory Match has unlimited free hints. Each one uncovers a pair for good - the partner of the card you have turned, if you have turned one - and counts as one move. That makes a hint the cheapest pair in the game: one move per pair, which is the theoretical floor. If you use hints, your move count will look excellent and mean very little.

Hints are there for children, for tired evenings and for when you simply want the board finished. If you want your best score to measure your memory, play without them, and compare it to the tables above.

So, is 15 moves on Easy good?

It is good - the same as a player who keeps about four cards in mind. Getting down to 12 or 13 means remembering around six, which is very achievable with a row-by-row sweep and a name for every picture. On Hard, under 35 is strong, and under 30 is about as close to perfect as human memory gets.