Every Cupcake in 2048 Cupcakes, From the 2 to the 2048

2048 Cupcakes has eleven tile pictures, one for each value from 2 to 2048. The number is printed in the corner of every cupcake, but after a few games you start to know them by sight. Here is the whole set, and what it takes to bake each one.

The cupcakes

• 2 — a cream swirl on a chocolate base. Most new tiles are this one.
• 4 — pink icing with little chocolate dots. Sometimes it appears on its own as a new tile.
• 8 — chocolate frosting with a nut on top, in a pink paper case.
• 16 — chocolate swirl with a raspberry and a striped candy cane.
• 32 — white icing with a strawberry and a stick of chocolate.
• 64 — a chocolate cake with sprinkles, cream and a strawberry, tied with a ribbon.
• 128 — pink and cream icing with a green leaf.
• 256 — layered icing with a cherry on cream and a red ribbon.
• 512 — a yellow and orange swirl in a red case, with a cherry and two wafer sticks.
• 1024 — chocolate-dipped with two hearts on top and a bow around the case.
• 2048 — a cupcake with a lit birthday candle. This is the win.

How many merges each one takes

Every cupcake is two of the one below it. So a 2048 is two 1024s, four 512s, eight 256s, and all the way down to 1,024 twos. In practice it is a little less work than that, because some new tiles arrive as 4s, but a game that reaches the candle still runs to roughly a thousand moves.

That is why the middle of the game matters most. The jump from 256 to 512 to 1024 is where boards get crowded, because you need a full staircase of smaller cupcakes ready at the same time.

How the score works

The score is not the biggest cupcake on the board. Every time two cupcakes merge, the value of the new one is added to your score: merging two 2s adds 4, merging two 512s adds 1,024. A game that reaches the 2048 cupcake usually ends with a score of about 20,000. Your best score is kept in this browser and shown next to the current one.

After the 2048 cupcake

When the candle cupcake appears, the game shows You win! with two choices: Try again, or Keep going. Keep going lets you play on with the same board. There is no cupcake picture for 4096: tiles above 2048 show as a plain dark tile with the number on it, which is how you know you have gone past the end of the bakery.

Why play the cupcake version?

The rules are identical to the original 2048 by Gabriele Cirulli. What changes is how quickly you read the board. Many players find pictures easier to scan than numbers: a pink cupcake next to another pink cupcake jumps out more than 4 next to 4. If you are learning the corner method, that small difference helps you spot merges you would have missed.

Three mistakes that stop most games around 512

• Two staircases at once. Building big cupcakes in two corners means neither line can feed the other. Keep one corner.
• A small cupcake stuck in the bottom row. A lone 2 between a 256 and a 64 blocks the whole chain. Merge it up from above as soon as you can, before it gets boxed in.
• Pressing the forbidden direction out of habit. One Up move with a gap in the bottom row can undo ten minutes of work. When nothing else seems to move, look again before you press it.

Saving and starting again

The game stores both your best score and the board you are playing in this browser. Reload or come back tomorrow and the same cupcakes are there. Press R, or New Game, to clear the board when you want a fresh start.