Match the Pairs: find every matching pair

By SharpDaily team · Reviewed by Noam · Published October 14, 2026

Match the Pairs is a picture matching card game. Every picture is on two face-down cards: turn over two at a time and find all the pairs. There's no clock.

Play a free round of Match the Pairs

Remember where each picture is. No sign-up, and speed never counts.

Match the Pairs at Level 2: 12 cards in a 4-by-3 grid, two pairs found (lemons and sunflowers), a fish card turned over, and the line Pair found, 4 to go — Level 2, the level of the free round: 12 cards, 6 pairs. The lemons and the sunflowers are found, and the fish is waiting for its match.

How to play

All the cards start face down, and each picture is on exactly two of them. Tap any card to turn it over.
Tap a second card.
Same picture? Both cards stay face up. Different pictures? After a moment they turn back over, and you try again.
Keep going until every pair is face up. The line under the cards keeps count, for example "Pair found — 4 to go."

How the score works

Turning over two cards is one turn. A perfect game takes one turn per pair: 6 turns for the 6 pairs at Level 2. Each extra turn takes a few points off, and the score never goes below 20, so finishing always counts for something.

Here is how it adds up at Level 2, where each extra turn costs 5 points:

Turns to find all 6 pairs	Extra turns	Score
6	0	100
10	4	80
14	8	60
22 or more	16 or more	20

Time plays no part in this game: not in the free round, and not in the app, whether relaxed mode is on or off.

Levels

Level	Cards	Pairs	Layout
1	8	4	4 across, 2 down
2	12	6	4 across, 3 down
3	16	8	4 across, 4 down
4	18	9	6 across, 3 down
5	20	10	5 across, 4 down

Bigger boards take less off for each extra turn: 7.5 points at Level 1, down to 3 points at Level 5.

The pictures

The cards use 12 pictures: an apple, a sunflower, a fish, a star, a bell, a lemon, a balloon, a ladybug, a four-leaf clover, a cup of coffee, a bicycle and a house. Each game picks the pictures it needs at random and shuffles the cards, so the layout changes every game.

The pictures are emoji, so they look a little different from one device to another. On an iPhone or iPad they appear in Apple's style, and the picture above was taken on a Windows computer. In the app, the pictures on the cards grow with the Extra-large text setting (Account → Settings).

Tips for fewer turns

Turn over a card you haven't seen yet first. If it matches one you've already seen, tap that card second: a pair in one turn.
Go along one row at a time. Working in order makes it easier to know where each picture was.
Name what you see. "Lemon, top row, first card." Saying the picture and its place to yourself is one way to keep track.
A miss still tells you something. Two cards that don't match show you where two more pictures are.

Also called Concentration

Match the Pairs follows the classic card game often called Concentration or Pairs, and sometimes just "the memory game." At a table it's played with a deck of cards laid face down. Here the cards show pictures, they turn back over by themselves, and nobody has to shuffle.

More picture puzzles: Where Was It? and Spot the Odd One. Or see all the games.