Matching pairs goes by many names: Concentration, Pelmanism, Memory, Pexeso, Pairs. The rules take ten seconds to learn. All the cards lie face down, you turn over two per turn, and a matching pair is yours. A mismatch flips back, and the only thing you keep is what you remember. That makes it a pure test of memory for what you saw and where you saw it, and it rewards a little strategy more than most people expect. Here is how to play well, the memory tricks that help, and what counts as a good score. Play free in our Matching Pairs game.
Shuffle the cards and lay them face down in a grid.
Turn over any two cards.
If they match, remove them (in multiplayer, you score the pair and usually take another turn).
If they do not match, turn them face down again in the same places.
Play until every pair is found. Solo, the goal is the fewest turns; in a group, the most pairs.
Every turn follows the same decision tree. Following it every time is most of the skill.
If you already know where both cards of a pair are, take them. Free pairs first, always.
Otherwise, turn over a card you have not seen yet. A new card is new information.
If that card matches one you have seen, turn over its partner and collect the pair.
If it is new, turn over a second unseen card. Now you learn two cards for the price of one turn, and sometimes you get lucky.
Never turn over two cards you have already seen unless they are a pair. It wastes the turn and teaches you nothing.
Mathematicians have analysed the game in detail. For a solo player with perfect memory, the best strategy needs about 1.61 turns per pair on average (Velleman and Warrington, 2013). In the two-player game, Uri Zwick and Mike Paterson (1993) found a surprise: in some positions it is better to turn a card you already know as your second card, so that you do not reveal a new card your opponent could use. In solo play, the simple rules above are close to optimal.
Count your turns and compare them with the number of pairs. With perfect memory you would need about 1.6 turns per pair; with no memory at all, random guessing needs many times more. Real players land in between.
These bands are a rule of thumb from the maths above, not published norms. Bigger boards scale roughly in proportion, so double the pairs and expect a little more than double the turns, because the board is harder to hold in mind.
| Turns | Rating |
|---|---|
| 13 or fewer | Excellent: close to the perfect-memory average of about 12.4 |
| 14 to 17 | Very good |
| 18 to 22 | Typical for an attentive adult |
| 23+ | Room to improve: use the tricks below |
Name the card and the place together. Say "cat, top left" or "cat, row 1, column 1" under your breath. Remembering a cat is useless without its location.
Use landmarks. Corners and edges are easiest to remember. Anchor cards to them: "star, next to the bottom-right corner".
Group the grid. Think of a 4 × 4 board as four quadrants of four cards. Smaller areas are easier to hold.
Turn cards in a sweep. Reveal new cards in a fixed order, such as left to right along a row, so you know which areas are explored.
Make links between cards. If a cat sits next to a fish, picture the cat eating the fish. A silly image binds the two places together.
Review before each turn. Glance over the board and silently recall what is under the cards you have seen.
These are the same principles behind the techniques in our guide to memory improvement techniques: attach meaning, use places, and rehearse. For the bigger picture, read how to improve memory.
Matching pairs trains visuospatial working memory: holding several objects and their positions at once and updating them as the board changes. It is one of the most accessible memory games for children and for older adults, because the rules are trivial and the difficulty scales simply with board size.
As with all brain games, your score improves mostly on the game itself; research does not show that card-matching practice protects against memory decline. It is still a pleasant, social way to exercise attention and memory, and much better for you than passive scrolling. For older players, see our guide to free brain games for seniors.
Bigger boards: 6 × 6 (18 pairs) is a serious memory test.
Timed rounds: play against the clock instead of counting turns.
Picture memory: in Room Memory and Missing Object you remember a whole scene instead of single cards.
Flash Memory: Flash Memory shows the grid once and then asks you to recall it, with no second look.
Physical cards: a standard deck works. Play with matching ranks and colours (two red 7s) for 26 pairs.
Velleman, D. J., & Warrington, G. S. (2013). What to expect in a game of memory. The American Mathematical Monthly.
Zwick, U., & Paterson, M. S. (1993). The memory game90355-W). Theoretical Computer Science.
Take any pair you know first. Otherwise turn a new card; if it matches one you have seen, turn its partner, and if not, turn another new card. Never turn two known non-matching cards.
Concentration, Pelmanism, Memory, Pexeso and Pairs are all names for the same game.
On a 16-card board, an attentive adult usually needs 18 to 22 turns. Under 14 is excellent. A player with perfect memory would need about 12 to 13 on average.
It exercises visual and spatial working memory and attention. Practice mainly improves the game itself, but it is an easy, enjoyable memory workout for all ages.
Say the card and its position together, anchor cards to corners and edges, and split the board into small areas so you only hold a few cards per area.
Take known pairs, turn new cards, never waste a turn on cards you already know, and name each card with its place. With those habits your turn count will fall within a few games. Try it now in Matching Pairs.