2048: How to continue when forced to go in the wrong direction

Solution 1:

Go straight down.

If you go left or right or even up again, the small tiles will spawn under the larger tiles and you will have nothing to merge them with.

If you go down straight away you will still have 2's, 4's and 8's to merge with.

For example:

In this case, the only possible move is up.

When you go up a small tile will spawn, don't worry, just go down again so that no more small tiles spawn at the bottom.

After you go down the small tile will still be there, but you can still continue with the game ignoring it, usually after making a few moves you will be able to get rid of it.

I used this game as an example, it works the same way with big tiles like 1024's, 2048's and even 4096's. It's almost never impossible to get out of a situation like this, you just need to think about each move before you do it.