Christmas Connect

Christmas Connect drops a flat grid of holiday pictures in front of you and starts a two-minute clock straight away. Baubles, wreaths, candy canes and wrapped gifts sit side by side in a single layer, so nothing is buried and nothing has to be uncovered first.

Link boards of this kind share one rule, and this one follows it: two identical pictures come off the grid when a clear lane runs between them and bends at a right angle no more than twice. Distance is not the problem, clutter is, and a pair sitting in opposite corners is usually unreachable until the rows in between have thinned out. The Fish Connections grid belongs to the same easy-going list.

Two minutes is short enough to change how the grid should be read. Sweeping the outer edge feels productive because those pictures are easy to reach, but the middle is where lanes get blocked, so opening the centre early tends to pay for itself twice over. Most lost rounds end the same way, with four or five pairs stranded behind a wall nobody cleared in time.

The grid scales up in full screen, which matters more here than on a board of plain tiles: a dozen small red-and-gold icons start to look alike at a glance, and the extra size separates a bauble from a bell before you spend a click on it. For a second flat pair-up, there is Pet Connect.

1. Start the round and let the grid of Christmas pictures settle before touching anything.
2. Find two identical icons, then click one and the other to link them.
3. Keep the joining lane clear, since it may bend but cannot cut through pictures still on the grid.
4. Empty the whole grid inside the two-minute limit to finish the round.

• Open the centre first — middle icons block the most lanes, and the outer rows stay reachable whatever happens.
• Clear in bulk — pick the picture you can see four copies of and take them all before moving on to the next design.
• Skip the clever links — with two minutes running, a pair two squares apart is worth more than a long route you had to trace.
• Count what is left — leftovers always come in twos, so an odd-looking cluster means a match is sitting in plain sight.