Hard Levels

A Hard Level is a level on Candy Crush Saga that is considered difficult by the majority of players. Levels can be hard for a whole mass of reasons. Any level type has the potential to have hard levels.

The hardest level type is thought to be Jelly Levels, and the easiest is thought to be Timed Levels, as there are no particularly difficult timed levels except 182 and 462 which are the hardest timed levels.

What Makes a Hard Level
Candy Bomb - An abundance of Candy Bombs, especially those with few moves in hard to reach places, can make a level much harder.

Notorious levels: 97, Original 147. 275, 350, 374, 445 and 482.

Blocker - Blockers can make a level hard by blocking off jellies or by stopping ingredients falling to the bottom. A blocker with many layers can make a level hard by the sheer number of hits needed.

Notorious levels: Original 147, 181, 305, 311 and 350.

Move Limit - In some levels the move limit is deliberately very low. This means a player must be very lucky with their moves.

Notorious levels: 33, 46, 97, 100, 323 and 463.

Layout - The board can sometimes take a very complicated and confusing shape, sometimes a very awkward shape, making jellies hard to reach.

Notorious levels: 45, 133, 310, 414, 434 and 458.

Chocolate Spawner - A chocolate spawner can make any level much harder, as they are unbreakable and never stop producing Chocolate. This will make a level much harder if they are in awkward positions.

Notorious levels: 167, 184, 213, 410 and 434.

Licorice Swirl - The licorice swirl is not a hard-to-break blocker itself, but it can make a level much harder if it is in big amounts, as it make striped candies almost useless and can be extremely annoying.

Notorious levels: 210, 293, 375, 382 and 410.

Difficult Orders - Sometimes Candy Order Levels can be hard due to the sheer difficulty of the order collection, for example a very hard-to-obtain special candy combo, such as mixing two Colour Bombs.

Notorious levels: 140, 165, 215, 254, 377, 419, 421 and 425.

Candy Colours - A level can have up to six candy colours. With six colours on the board, the candies are much more mixed up and matches are harder to make, as are special candies, making a level significantly harder than it would be if there were five or four colours.

Notorious levels: 140, 165, 254 , 347, 377, 419, and 421.


 * 65 was taken off this list after a recent update on the Facebook version removed one color and turned most of the inner jellies from double to regular.

High Target Scores - In some levels, getting the orders is relatively easy, but getting the target score is the hard part. So you need a good "Sugar Crush" in order to pass the level.

Notorious levels: 97, 169 and 183, where it's much more of a problem on Facebook than on iOS. There is an exceptional case in 97 where it is claimed that iOS is harder than Facebook, though the target score is the same - 100,000.

Misplaced ingredients - In ingredients drop levels, you have to drop the ingredients where the green arrow are, but sometimes, the  ingredients are just under a dead space, where an ingredient can't fall, it is really hard to move a stuck ingredient.

Notorious levels: 95, 117, 315, 409 and 445.

Too many ingredients - In Ingredient Drop Levels, the ingredients are generated in function of how many moves you did, but where they are too many ingredients needed, when you run out of moves considering you didn't drop any ingredients, not all ingredients are present, forcing you to drop all the ingredients in the board to make a new one after one move. And it is really hard.

Notorious levels: 30, 74, 325, 357 and 376.

Toffee Tornado - These candies land on a random candy on each move, and make it very hard to plan on your moves, especially in objective levels calling for a combination of 2 special candies (2 combos) because sometimes they land on one of your special candies and you have to make it again.

Notorious levels: 417, 419, 421 and 425.

Unstable Moon Scale and/or Short Moon Strike  - In Dreamworld, there is a Moon Scale to balance between two candies. Some levels are designed so that there are going to be a lot of cascades or that the scale is very unstable, thus forcing an owl to fall down. You lose the game if Odus falls down. The list goes on and on because there are pretty much way more levels that have an unstable Moon Scale. The following levels are the levels where players find a big struggle at mainly because of the Moon Scale. However there are more levels with a bad Moon Scale and a very short Moon Strike. There is for sure a longer list than what it is right now.

Notorious levels (Dreamworld Only): 24, 45, 54, 147, etc (please expand list)

Hardest in the game
Ever since levels 65 and 147 got major changes, a poll was created to determine the new hardest level in the game.

List of Hard Levels
You can find all hard levels here:

Category:Hard Levels

Category:Very hard levels

Category:Insanely hard levels

Trivia

 * Levels ending with 65 tend to be considered a struggle by people, although it they're not the hardest levels (ie, 65 itself, 165, 265, 365, 465).