Jogakbo Rules and Tips

Jogakbo is a puzzle where you move numbered tiles around to rebuild melds. The table already holds several melds, and a few tiles in your hand haven't found a home yet. Once you've linked every one of them onto the table, that day's board is complete. You never do any arithmetic. You only need to know two shapes: a group of the same number, and a run of consecutive numbers.

Grouping the same number or lining up consecutive numbers is the same rule long used in Hula-style card games and several tile games. If you've played one before, your hands will know what to do from the first board. Here, though, you're not competing against an opponent. One board opens per day, and how few moves it took to finish is that day's score.

There's one thing worth knowing up front. This puzzle isn't a game where you slot your hand's tiles into empty spots. It's a game where you deliberately break apart a meld already on the table and use those tiles to build a new one. So it's normal for the table to get messy for a while, and fearing that mess is exactly what keeps a board unsolved.

Only two shapes count as a meld

Call a cluster of tiles on the table a meld. Only two shapes count as one: tiles of the same number in different colors, and tiles of the same color in consecutive numbers. Either way, you need at least three tiles. Two tiles, however well they match, are never a meld.

Grouping the same number

The number must match and the colors must differ. Red 7, Blue 7, and Black 7 make a three-tile meld, and adding Yellow 7 makes four. Since there are only four colors, four tiles is the cap for this shape. You can't use the same color twice, so two Red 7s side by side is not allowed.

Running consecutive numbers

This one flips it: the color must match and the numbers must run consecutively. Blue 4, Blue 5, and Blue 6 works. Three tiles is the minimum with no cap above, so a run of six or seven tiles is still a single meld. Numbers run 1 through 13, so there's no room to extend past 13 or below 1.

The order tiles sit in on screen doesn't affect the ruling. If you attach a Blue 3 after the fact to the end of a Blue 4, Blue 5, Blue 6 run, it still counts as a valid meld as long as the tiles link up. It may look messy to the eye, but the app is counting correctly, so you don't need to spend moves tidying the order.

When it ends

The board is done once your hand is completely empty and every meld on the table is one of the two shapes above. You're allowed to break the rule in the middle. Pulling one tile out of a three-tile meld leaves it at two, briefly invalid, but it only needs to be entirely valid the moment you press Done.

From here on, this is what this particular app actually does. Even within the same family of games, this varies app to app, so reading it once saves confusion later.

What the tiles look like

Tiles carry a number from 1 to 13 and one of four colors: red, blue, yellow, black, and each tile exists in two copies. So seeing two Blue 5 tiles on the table at once is not a mistake. The rules also recognize a joker tile that can stand in for any spot, but since a daily board only draws numbered tiles, a joker never shows up in your hand or on the table on any given day.

One board a day, the same board for everyone

The board is built from a value drawn from that day's date. Everyone who arrives on the same day gets the same board, and a new one opens when the day changes. That's what makes move counts comparable. Both building the board and solving it happen entirely in your browser, and no account is needed.

Only boards with a solution are ever shown

The order the board is built in runs backward. First, eight fully valid melds are built, following every rule. Two of those are then broken apart into loose tiles. The remaining six melds are the board you first see. Because it started from a finished shape, the build process itself guarantees a solution exists.

The key part comes next. Not all of the broken-apart tiles go to your hand. Two or three of them are quietly attached to the remaining six melds. They're attached at spots like the ends of a run or a missing color in a three-tile group, so the meld still looks perfectly valid after they're attached. But that tile was originally essential to a different meld, so finishing the board requires breaking that meld apart and taking it back. This is exactly why this app can never be solved by only slotting in tiles from your hand.

If a day would attach fewer than two tiles this way, that board is discarded and redrawn, since it would solve without any breaking apart and stop being a puzzle. If the hand ends up with too few or too many tiles, it's also redrawn. So the boards that actually open have six melds and a hand of four to eight tiles.

Moves and par

Moving one tile counts as one move. Moving from your hand into a meld is one move, pulling a tile from one meld to another is one move, and setting one down in a new spot is one move. There's no undo, so putting a tile back where it was costs another move too.

The par shown on screen is the move count for finishing that day's board in close to the fewest moves possible. The math is simple: the number of tiles in your hand plus the number of tiles attached to other melds that need to be taken back. Move each tile exactly once and you land on this number. Six tiles in hand and two to take back makes a par of eight. Depending on the day, it usually runs between six and ten. You can still finish over par. Wandering just costs extra moves.

How to pick and move

Press a tile first to select it; it gets a border. From there, pressing a meld attaches it there, and pressing the new-spot button starts a fresh meld with just that tile. Tiles in your hand and tiles on the table can both be picked the same way, so pulling a tile off the table also takes just two presses. Press the same tile again to deselect if you picked the wrong one. Selecting without moving doesn't add to your move count.

A meld that isn't yet valid gets a red border telling you it's not right yet. That's only a warning, it doesn't block anything. A meld spot with no tiles left in it disappears on its own. Here's what's missing too, worth stating plainly: there's no undo, no hint that gives away the answer, and no auto-sort for your hand.

Saved progress and sharing

The moment you make even one move, that board's state is saved in this browser, so refreshing or closing and reopening the tab lets you keep sewing where you left off. A board with zero moves isn't saved at all. Once the date changes, yesterday's save is discarded, and if the saved tile makeup doesn't match today's board, it's read as a different board and ignored.

Finishing brings up a button to copy your result. The copied text carries the date, your move count, and how it compares to par. It doesn't carry where any tile ended up, so sending it to someone still mid-puzzle won't leak the answer.

Picture the finish before you move

With no undo, moving your hand first bleeds moves. Look at each tile in your hand and decide in your head which meld it belongs to, and only start moving once that whole picture is set. Par assumes exactly one move per tile, so moving without a plan and then reversing it puts you over par from that point on.

Look first for spots that survive being broken

There's one standard for picking what to break apart: after pulling one tile, what's left must still be three or more. A four-tile run or a four-tile same-number group is exactly that kind of spot. A three-tile meld collapses the moment one tile leaves, so save those for last.

On a long run, only touch the ends

Pull Blue 6 out of a five-tile run from Blue 4 to Blue 8, and it splits into 4-5 and 7-8, both left at two. One pull just killed two melds at once. Leave the middle alone and pull from the ends, Blue 4 or Blue 8, instead. Same-number groups don't have this trap: with four tiles, pulling any color leaves the remaining three intact.

Count the pairs already in your hand

If your hand has the same number in two different colors, finding just one more makes a meld. Two consecutive numbers work the same way. Finding where that one tile sits on the table is usually the first thread to pull each day. Conversely, a lone tile in your hand with no pair should wait, since you'll need to find where it fits on the table.

Spotting the attached guest

Knowing how the board is built changes what you look for. Somewhere among the six melds, two or three tiles that don't originally belong to that meld are mixed in. They sit at the very end of a run, or hold one color in a four-tile same-number group. In other words, the spots that survive breaking and the spots you need to take back mostly overlap. Scan the ends of long runs and four-tile groups first, and today's spot to break usually shows up fast.

Trading between a same-number group and a run

If your hand has Red 9 and Blue 9, that's still only two tiles, not yet a meld. Look on the table for a Black 9 or Yellow 9; if it sits at the end of a long run, pulling it out leaves that run intact. Moving one tile rescues two tiles in your hand at once, a large savings in moves. It works the other way too: with two consecutive numbers in hand, pull the one color you need from a four-tile same-number group.

Splitting a long run in two

A run of six or more tiles can be split into two runs of three. This is a last resort for when nothing in your hand has anywhere to attach, and it's expensive: splitting means moving three tiles to a new spot, which alone costs three moves. If staying within par matters, double check there really is no way to pull from the ends before reaching for this move.

Using the fact that each tile has two copies

Since every tile exists in two copies, some days a table has two Red 3s on it. A run can't hold both copies at once, but two different runs each can. A same-number group works the same way as long as the colors don't overlap, so picture splitting them: one copy into this meld, the other into that one. When the tile you need seems to be missing, checking where its other copy sits often opens the path.

The Done button won't press

Done only activates when two conditions hold at once: your hand is empty, and every meld on the table is valid. If it's not pressing even with an empty hand, a red border is sitting somewhere on the table. The most common cause is dropping a single tile into a new spot and forgetting about it. A leftover two-tile meld keeps it blocked the same way.

Nothing in your hand attaches anywhere

That's normal. This board is built so that a tile from your hand can never just slot in on its own. Stop searching for a spot to attach it, and flip the question around instead. Decide what meld you want to build with what's currently in your hand, then find where on the table the tile you're missing to finish that meld is sitting.

Lost after breaking something apart

A broken-apart board can feel risky with no undo, but no tile is ever lost. Reattach the tiles you pulled back to their original spot and that meld comes right back to life. Only your move count grows, the board never breaks for good, so it's fine to focus purely on finishing today and chase par again another day.

Move count keeps going over par

There's usually one cause: starting to move before the picture is complete. Par assumes one move per tile, so moving the same tile twice already puts you one move over right there. Even with itchy hands, decide exactly which tile needs to come back before making your first move.

The order looks off and it's unsettling

Even if an attached tile ends up at the end of a run and the numbers look scrambled, the app still counts it as a valid meld. Moving tiles again just to make the order look tidy only adds to your move count. If there's no red border, that meld has already passed, so leave it alone.