I was introduced to JezzBall by a friend who claimed to have played hundreds of hours, never to get past level 8. Bill (my boyfriend - nay, my religion) is an old hand at sussing pooter games, and he zeroed in on the optimal channel width, i.e. 2 squares. Then you could pinch the balls (so to speak) and stop them, using only one square per ball. I'm proud to say that I was the one who discovered the Holy Grail of creating channels without using up any lives at all. I always begin my channels in the upper right corner, placing the vertical arrow near the lower right-hand corner, clicking, then reversing the arrow direction and starting a channel towards the right-hand edge of the grid. I've gotten away with doing this as high as level 10 without getting burned for a life. Never 10 levels in a row, though.

Bill discovered that you can create a channel by clicking ON a ball, getting a line in one direction and losing no lives. He's created some funky patterns on the grid.

When I'm pondering something deeply (the nature of love, the nature of synchronicity, my eccentric friend who won 34 million and became a monster...), I'm able to nail those suckers down one after another. I don't lose my head.