I was reading all your "I wasted x hours on this" and I rolled my eyes - "My god, these guys fall for everything". Then I tried it. Couldn't sleep. Damn it!
Best strategy (for me) seems to be to play it like tetris. Never ever use the up key and create a row at the bottom where everything collapses into it.
This sort of clicked towards, oooh I don't know about 1:30am this morning.
Downloaded and installed. Can you please remove the almost mandatory google games sign in, or make it optional. I tries to connect every time I move between the game and the menu, and I don't want it to connect...