Winning at 2048

So this is a fun, simple, but challenging game that a student showed me: the aim is to slide numbers around on a grid, doubling them -- crashing 2s into 2s, which thus become 4s, which you then must crash together into 8s, etc. Every time you make a move, a random "2" (or on some versions, the occasional 4) will materialize elsewhere on the board, sometimes filling a space you meant to move back into. To move, you can only use the directional arrows (or whatever keys work on your phone; I haven't tried it there) -- which means moving the whole row to the left or right or up or down; there are only the four possibilities. The game ends when no further moves are possible. It's fun enough to try to figure it out without any tips -- there's a bit of an adventure to be had just trying to figure out how to get a decent score, and I remember that without assistance, I was able to get as high as 512 soon enough. But if you want a heads up on how to proceed -- which will rapidly take you to the next level, the key is that you want to keep all the high numbers in one full row at the margin, restricting the movement to the remaining rows, pairing up numbers until you can add them to the bigger ones up at the top; you'll be tempted, sometimes, to take risks and break up the row of high numbers, but more often than not, you'll find you won't be able to recover the pattern and soon thereafter you'll lose. Just don't let small numbers get trapped behind big numbers, restrict your movements to only a portion of the board, and soon enough your 512s will turn in 1024s -- I only broke the pattern tonight because I could see victory three moves away. Tonight was my first 2048! Apparently it is possible to go beyond that target, but not on this website; this is the first time I've actually won the game.