The rules page already covers scoring, the no-reverse rule, and the four tick rates. This page is about the choices that keep showing up once a run gets long. If the buttons are still unfamiliar, read Snake rules first, then play three normal-speed games on Play now. That separates a routing mistake from a speed mistake more clearly than opening on turbo.
Keep an exit on the first loops
With a short body facing right, a lap along the top or bottom looks safe. Past about ten segments, the exit of that lap is often your own neck. If the next dot would pull you into a one-cell corridor on the rim, take a wider loop through the middle and enter the corner after the tail has left it.
Slow is only 12×12, so three starting segments fill a corner quickly. Normal 20×20 has more open middle, which is the better place to practice “is the cell beside my next step still empty?” before you practice raw reaction time.
Turn one cell before the food
The snake moves on the tick, not on the keypress. Turbo is about 0.075 seconds per cell. When the dot is beside the head, a late press often means the head has already passed the junction. Commit on the cell before the turn: read the next square, then press, instead of waiting until the dot feels close.
The opposite key is not a brake. Mashing left while you travel right keeps you moving right until you turn up or down first. If a press seems ignored, look at the head’s current facing before you repeat the same reverse.
A corner dot can wait
A dot that spawns in a corner often means driving into a one-cell pocket while the tail still blocks the only way out. If you can loop and the dot is still there, or the next one lands in open space, skipping it is usually worth more than the extra point. Score counts food only. There is no time bonus, and leaving a dot does not subtract.
The board never holds two dots. The one you skip does not pile up. After the body moves, a new dot appears on an empty cell. You do not have to dive into a pocket you just built in order to “catch it before it vanishes.”
Switch to a loop once you are long
After your length passes the side of the grid, chasing every dot tends to close you in. A steadier pattern is a fixed loop with the tail following the back of that loop, taking food only when it sits on the path. Leave at least one spare cell for the turn. A lap glued to all four walls has almost no room to change course in the second half of a run.
If the loop is already cut by your own body, pause and look, then resume. That is more useful than a string of direction changes on turbo. Pause is not undo. It only stops the automatic steps so you can see which cell is still an exit.
Which preset to practice on
If up and down still get swapped under pressure, stay on slow until “no reverse” is automatic, then move to normal. Once normal runs regularly past fifteen dots, try fast: same grid, shorter gap, so you can tell a late decision from a late key. Turbo is a larger board and a shorter gap. It fits people who already hold a loop on 20×20. It is a poor place to hunt a first high score.
All four presets share one best. If the only goal is the number in the side panel, slow is often easier than turbo, because ten dots give you more time to react. That is how a single saved score works here, not a scoring hole.
How runs usually end
One extra cell on a wall turn sends the head off the board. Chasing food before the tail clears the lane hits your own middle. Trying to reverse inside a narrow corridor ignores the opposite key, so you continue straight into the wall. None of those are scoring bugs. After Game over, only a new run helps. Pause will not restore the snake.
If a run ends when you are sure the head never touched a wall or a segment, note the speed, the rough length, and the last direction you pressed, and send that from Contact. The rules on this site stay: solid edges, one cell per step, one point per dot.
