About Fruit Drop

Drop fruit into a jar. Two of the same that touch become one of the next size up — two cherries make a strawberry, two strawberries a grape, and so on up through lime, orange, apple, pear, peach, pineapple and melon to a watermelon. Two watermelons that meet vanish altogether, which is the best thing that can happen in a jar. Keep everything below the dashed line: something that sits above it for more than a moment ends the game.

Everything falls and rolls properly. The fruit settle into the gaps, lean on each other and roll off each other's shoulders, so where you let something go matters as much as what it is, and a merge low in the pile shuffles everything above it. Only the five smallest are ever dropped; everything bigger has to be made, and every size is worth more than the one below it, so the big merges are where the score is.

There is a second look for the same game: planets, from the moon up through the planets to the sun and a star. The daily challenge gives every player the same things to drop in the same order and ranks the day by score, once a day. Free play is unlimited and keeps your own best.

Tips to win

• Keep the big ones in a corner and build towards them; a watermelon in the middle of the jar blocks everything
• Drop small things beside their twins, not on top of something bigger — they roll
• Keep a row of sizes stepping down from one side to the other, so every merge sets up the next
• Watch the next one as well as the current one: sometimes the right drop is the one that makes room for what comes after