Candy Crush: Top 10 tips, tricks, and cheats!

1. Find the patterns!

There are things that will make a sprinkle donut hole or special candy effortlessly. Recognizing and repeating them allows you to wipe the board and earn your ticket to the next level faster. I'm always looking for these patterns. I memorize which patterns lead to which special candy and then set them up whenever possible and as needed.

2. Start at the bottom

Crushing candies on the bottom is better than crushing candies at the top, because candies drop down, creating the potential for a cascade effect that essentially gives you free moves.

3. Go for combos

The two best combinations are the wrapped candy and the striped candy, and the sprinkle donut hole and the striped candy. Together, they can wipe out over half the board for you. This can also help you get to places which are off the board or otherwise difficult to reach. This is the only way you will get by levels such as 181, which have unreachable squares. Also, a wrapped candy switched with another wrapped candy will ignite a 6 by 4 square which can clear a huge area.

4. Know your stripes!

Candy is striped in the same direction as the final candy moved to complete the previous formation. If you move a candy horizontally, it will make a horizontal stripe, which will then explode horizontally as well.

5. Assess your threats!

Assess your threats. Prioritize getting rid of evil candy by their threat levels. For example, I usually make it a rule to kill low number bombs first, then chocolate, then go after the blocks.

6. Clear jellies on the edge!

Clearing jellies on the edge. When getting rid of jellies, only worry about the edges, especially the corners and bottoms. These jellies have the least number of combinations which can eliminate them, so will be the hardest to get rid of. Take a moment each move to see if you can get rid of edge jellies and, if not, go after an easier one.

7. Have a plan!

Have a plan. Each time you start a new level, look at the hardest element on that level and think out how you can defeat it first before you use up lives. Also, pause between moves. You may have a sprinkle and not even realize it if you're watching the candies from a lesser move get crushed.

8. Understand chocolate!

Understand chocolate. If you've eaten a piece of chocolate one round, chocolate will not regenerate the following round. This is a great way to keep chocolate at bay. Try to destroy chocolate each round so that it won't regenerate the next. You can clear the entire board of chocolate using this method, though in later levels there is a chocolate maker which will bring them back in vicious fashion. Chocolate will avoid special candy if it can. Chocolate will also not eat a fruit or nut, though it will absorb bombs.

9. +5 Candy is your friend.

Make a candy crush chain with +5 on whatever levels you can. This will add 5 seconds to a time trial level. You can tell if it is a "time trial" level or a "clear the jelly" level based on the small icon in the lower left corner of the start up screen for each level.

10. Cheat time for extra lives!

If you don't use Facebook, there's still a cheat to get you extra lives. Turn the clock on your mobile device ahead 2 hours, and then keep playing to your hearts content. Go to Settings > General> Date & Time > Set Time Off > Set Date and Time > Add two hours forward and get 4 more lives in your game. You will eventually have to pay back the time, but schedule that for when you're sleeping anyway. Remember to change the time from PM to AM if you are going past midnight.

Update: rodrigonew in the comments adds this brilliant twist to the extra lives cheat:

For "cheat time for extra lives" one, there's a better way: go to settings>set date and time>set manually>add a day. Then you go to candy crush, verify that the 5 lives were added and BEFORE PLAYING you go back to settings and change it to be set automatically. This way you don't have to make up for the lost time, it somehow doesn't register the increase of a day if you don't loose any lives before changing it back.