The great thing about the internet is the way it allows like-minded individuals to gather and absolutely obsess over their interests. From the eccentrics who mod their Xbox controllers for Marble Blast Ultra high scores to the people who discovered Modern Warfare 2‘s Javelin glitch, there’s no shortage of examples that when enough people bang on a game for a long enough amount of time, almost anything is possible.

Eight in a row! Aww snap!

One of the coolest examples of this I’ve seen in a while is a series of images by the admin of message board eDepot depicting how it’s theoretically possible to get a 6, 7, or even 8-in-a-row match in any 8×8 Match 3 game, like Bejeweled or Puzzle Quest. How awesome is that? The highest these games usually reward players for is the much less complicated 5-in-a-row, so I’d love to know what happens if you manage to pull one of these bad boys off.

Even crazier is eDepot’s example illustrating how one might match 24 pieces at once, depicted below. TWENTY FOUR PIECES. The picture is fairly self-explanatory, but just in case: what follows is a 5-in-a-row which leads into four simultaneous 3-in-a-rows, culminating in two 8-in-a-rows and four 4-in-a-rows AT THE SAME TIME. That is pretty insane.

The fabled 24-gem match.

While it seems unlikely that anyone could actually set up and execute any of these on purpose, it’s kinda neat to see that it’s at least possible. To see all of the guy’s discoveries, check out his lengthy and illustrated forum post here.