Level 181

Vote for the difficulty of this level in the poll section.

Level 181 is the eleventh level in Cupcake Circus and the 47th ingredients level. To pass this level, you must bring down 2 cherries and score at least 20,000 points in 50 moves or fewer. When you complete the level, Sugar Crush is activated.

Difficulty

 * The level design is similar to level 95, with two islands. However, the two islands consist of two-layer and three-layer icing. The icing on both sides have the following layers: 2-3-3-2 (top to bottom).
 * The ingredient column is not connected to the main part of board, and the only way to break the icing is to make horizontally striped candies or their combinations.
 * The main part of the board is not wide enough to create striped candies easily.
 * Some players can pass in 1 try but this level is enough to grind someone's gears.
 * It is frustrating enough to make players quit.
 * The ingredients are worth 20,000 points (2 ingredients x 10,000 points per ingredient = 20,000 points) which is equal to the one star target score.

Strategy

 * There is only one way to pass this level - the hardcore way. After making room for the main board area, keep on blasting horizontal stripes into the icing. Wrapped candies are useful, as they can be mixed with striped candies, including the vertical ones, which help significantly in this level. A colour bomb only helps indirectly in terms of reducing colours for a better chance to make special candies, or creating a colour bomb + striped candy combination. However, the latter is not recommended as the striped candies created from the combination may be too low, too high or have stripes in the wrong direction.
 * In short, assuming all horizontal striped candies are placed correctly and set off (refer to pictures for the positions), there are a total of 10 hits needed to bring down the ingredients. If wrapped candy + striped candy combinations are used, placed correctly and set off, there are a total of 5 hits needed to bring down the ingredients (3 to take out the three-layered icing and 2 striped candies or 2 wrapped candy + striped candy combinations to take out the two-layered icing).
 * Try to overlap stripes on the same column to shred more than 1 layer. If you get 3 or 4, you can shred 1-8 layers!
 * A way to sort of cheat the level is to get 20 lollipop hammers and destroy all the icing.

Earning More Stars

 *  Difficulty: Very easy
 *  Difficulty: Very easy

Reason

 * The presence of five colours makes it easy to create special candies and is essential as special candies must be used to drop the ingredients.
 * The ingredients are worth 20,000 points. Hence, an additional 35,000 points for two stars and an additional 45,000 points for three stars have to be earned through matching of candies.
 * The player is required to earn an additional 700 points per move (35,000 points / 50 moves = 700 points per move) for two stars and an additional 900 points per move (45,000 points / 50 moves = 900 points per move) for three stars. However, the icing at the start of the level means that players will only earn points in the low hundreds for at least the first five moves.
 * 50 moves is more than sufficient to create at least one colour bomb. However, it is not necessary and is not encouraged because it does not help much in dropping the ingredients.
 * The icing at the start of the level mean that a good number of moves have to wasted to clear them and increase the size of the board. Despite this, special candies can be formed after the first two to three moves.
 * Since the cherries are on the isolated sides of the board, the most effective way to clear them is to use wrapped candy + striped candy combinations, reducing the number of moves left for sugar crush. Furthermore, that above mentioned combination has to be done multiple times, further reducing the number of remaining moves.
 * If done correctly, the player would only need at least 4 combinations to complete the level.
 * This above point is slightly made less critical by the fact that the above combination can give thousands of points. In fact, with well placed wrapped candy + striped candy combinations, it is possible to finish this level in as few moves as possible to give a huge amount of points due to sugar crush.

Trivia

 * This used to be the second level in Difficulty Cluster.
 * This is one of the game's hardest and most hated levels. It is one of the hardest ingredient levels in the whole game. This isn't quite as notorious as the original level 147, but it isn't that far off in difficulty.
 * It is known as one of the Candy Crush's hardest levels, and the hardest ingredient drop level according to this wiki, and probably the hardest level of Difficulty Cluster.
 * This level had been voted as the third hardest level in the game just before levels 461 and 500 were introduced, only to be under the original levels 147 and 350. However, with the increase of more levels into the poll, its rank has dropped. However after all the insanely hard levels (see below) got nerfed, its place is retained.
 * With the recent nerf, this is one of the few levels in this episode in which four layer icing is not present.
 * This is one of the few levels to make a cameo in a Candy Crush Saga TV advertisement. The other levels are Level 461, Level 50, Level 33, Level 97, Level 70, Level 290, Level 361, Level 147, and Level 350. These levels were rated hard or harder.