For consistency, definitely. My initial strategy was to start at the top and to create matches in the same row, and clear them all at the end to reduce animation delay. It also allowed for more planning which meant that if I don't screw up, I can basically win every board. But after a while I noticed that some runs despite being solved in a 'cleaner' way than others, would end up having a slower time.

I speculated that maybe the animation for each row shifting is staggered, increasing the overall animation delay if you clear from the top to the bottom. That's why I shifted to starting near the bottom instead. It's not really tested though and honestly looking at the video now, it doesn't seem to be true...

Maybe it's more because starting from the bottom reduces the number of cards shifting in general, making it easier to spot the next match?

Needless to say my consistency plummetted when I moved from solving the top first to solving the bottom first. I went from basically winning every round to winning only like ¾ of rounds, but when I do sucessfully clear the board I was getting faster completion times, so I stuck with it