Taptiles

As of January 2015, the parameters have changed. A gold badge is awarded during the month for obtaining 12,000 coins through Daily Challenges, and there are five challenges per day, making gold much easier. Challenges are now ranked by difficulty; easy is worth 100 coins, medium is worth 150, hard is worth 200, and expert is worth 300. For this achievement, you must get 8 gold badges, or one per month.

The bonus is that while it is a Daily Challenge, you are available to go back to any previous day that month to play previous challenges, so if you miss a day it isn't the end of the world. This is important, because unless you're an expert and can beat every Daily Challenge with ease, a gold medal all but requires every challenge to be played.


There are a number of challenges you can let slide and miss out on the bonus 150 coins. Keep this in mind when going up against tough challenges. For Color Charge and Mix and Match, it tells you how many puzzles to solve in how much time. Color Charge is the easiest of the bunch, but can still get up to 14 or 15 puzzles in 3:30. Not impossible, but keeps you on your toes. Mix and Match is typically shorter, but I've run into the occasional puzzle where it throws one huge puzzle you are not expected to keep your speedchain through, followed by a few easier puzzles; however, it has not done that since February or March.

For Sprint Match, play it a few times before giving up on it. It tends to cycle through similar patterns, so restarting a few times can sometimes help. Also, don't give up as soon as you drop your chain! It tends to be possible to rebuild the chain, even if they only give 1:30. Tap Tower varies the most, but on Easy or Medium, if you can maintain control early on and have to wait for the puzzle to scroll up, the rest of it is a cakewalk. Hard can scroll quickly and overwhelm, so this will likely take a few tries. Unfortunately, I have no advice for Expert with a mouse. For those with a touch screen, tmeerbott has this to say:

"For the longest time I couldn't even come close on the hard and expert Tap Tower but I tried something new this weekend and cleared every one. I start off trying to make as many matches as I can as fast as I can. When the tower reaches about half way up the screen (I am using a Surface RT), I use multiple fingers on both hands and randomly tap the screen as fast as possible. This usually allowed me to clear most of the visible tiles is a very short time period. Then I just repeat these steps until the challenge is complete."


The bonus for completing all challenges for a day is necessary to score high enough. Rather than a list of how many challenges you'd have to beat and play, with the new scoring system, it becomes easier to look at it as a number of coins per week as opposed to day.

Aim for 3,000 coins per week. This will give you a good idea for when to skip challenges; for example, if Week 2 is about to end, you have 6,500 coins and there's an Expert challenge you just can't beat? Just let it go and move on, you're over the success threshold. The other bonus is that excluding February, you still have an extra 2-3 days to make up lost ground if you find yourself just shy after Week 4.

See my solution under "Go For the Bronze." Your system clock can be changed to a previous month in order to access additional challenges and medals and therefore achieve multiple golds, silvers, and bronzes in a single month.

Also, strive to accomplish all of a day's challenges, as this will give you a bonus 150 coins. This means for every 6 days (give or take) of challenges you've completed, you have essentially received a 7th day's worth of coins as a bonus. You are leaving free coins on the table by completing anything less than all of the challenges for a day.