Mahjong Solitaire

How do you play Mahjong Solitaire?

The board is a stack of tiles laid out in a shape such as a turtle, a pyramid or a bridge. Your job is to remove every tile by taking them off in matching pairs. Tap one free tile to pick it, then tap a second free tile that matches. Both tiles lift off the board and the tiles beneath them are uncovered.

You win when no tiles are left. If you run out of pairs before that, you can undo, shuffle the remaining tiles or start again. There is no score to chase: the game is about clearing the board, and the clock gives you a best time to beat on each layout.

• Pick a free tile. It lifts slightly and turns warm yellow.
• Pick a second tile that matches. If it matches and is free, both vanish.
• If it does not match, the tiles shake and your new tile becomes the selected one.
• Tap the selected tile again to put it down.
• Clear every tile to finish.

Which tiles are free and can be picked?

This one rule is the whole game. A tile is free when two things are true: no tile sits on top of it, and either its left side or its right side has nothing touching it. A tile hemmed in on both left and right is blocked even if nothing is on top, and a tile with a neighbour on only one side is still free.

Tiles that are not free are dimmed so you can see at a glance what you can use. You can turn the dimming off in the start panel if you like the traditional look. On a half-step layout, where an upper tile sits between two below, the upper tile covers both of them, so both stay blocked until it is gone.

What are the Mahjong tiles: suits, honors, flowers and seasons?

A full set has 144 tiles drawn in seven groups. Four copies of each of the 34 standard tiles make 136, and the 8 bonus tiles bring it to 144. Every picture here is drawn in the game, so it stays sharp on any screen.

• Circles (dots), 1 to 9: round discs, four copies of each number.
• Bamboo, 1 to 9: green and red sticks, with the one of bamboo drawn as a small bird.
• Characters, 1 to 9: a number stroke above the red character for ten thousand.
• Winds: East, South, West and North, four copies each, marked with a letter.
• Dragons: Red, Green and White, four copies each.
• Flowers: Plum, Orchid, Chrysanthemum and Bamboo. Any flower matches any other flower.
• Seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Any season matches any other season.

Is every Mahjong Solitaire game winnable?

In many Mahjong Solitaire games, a fair share of random deals cannot be solved at all, which is why the idea of a guaranteed win matters. Here every deal is built backwards: the game starts from an empty layout, removes pairs of free positions in a legal order, and then assigns matching tiles to each pair. Playing that order forwards clears the board, so each new deal has at least one winning route.

That does not mean you cannot lose. Several tiles of one kind are often free at the same moment, and choosing the wrong pair can block the tiles you needed later. Think of the guarantee as a promise that a solution exists, not that every path leads to it. The hint button searches for a real route to the end and suggests the first step of it, and a shuffle rebuilds the remaining tiles with the same backwards method, so a shuffled board is winnable too.

Which layouts can you play?

There are eight layouts, from a gentle first board to the full classic. The start panel shows a small picture of each one, its tile count and a difficulty rating, and it remembers your best time on every layout.

• Turtle: the classic 144 tiles in five levels, the layout most people mean when they say Mahjong Solitaire.
• Easy: 36 tiles in three levels, small and forgiving, the best place to learn.
• Pyramid: 114 tiles in neat steps, with every upper tile resting on four below.
• Fortress: 118 tiles, four corner towers around a central keep.
• Cat: 130 tiles, with pointed ears and a curled tail.
• Crab: 106 tiles, with claws, a shell and legs.
• Bridge: 140 tiles, two towers joined by a long deck.
• Dragon: 142 tiles in a winding body that needs careful planning.

How do hints, undo and shuffle work?

Hint highlights a pair of matching free tiles that keeps the board winnable. It looks for a complete way to clear everything from where you are, so you are not led into a dead end. If the position has become too tangled for it to find a full route, it still shows a legal pair and tells you it may not be the best move. Hints are counted, and a game without them earns the Clean Sweep badge on a large layout.

Undo takes back your last pair and can be used as often as you like, all the way to the start. It is the quickest way out of a mistake and it adds no penalty except a note in your results.

Shuffle deals the tiles that remain onto the places that remain, and you get three per game. When no matches are left, the game offers a shuffle straight away. After it, you are guaranteed a board that can still be cleared.

How do you clear the board every time? Mahjong Solitaire strategy

A few habits turn a random-feeling game into a steady win. None of them need a perfect memory, only a habit of looking one move ahead.

• Work from the top of the tallest stacks first. Tiles buried under many others are the ones that cause trouble late, so free them early.
• Free the middle of the board before you clean up the edges. The central stack holds many tiles in place.
• Look at all four copies of a tile before you take a pair. If two of the four are buried, take the free pair that uncovers the buried ones.
• Do not take the last free pair of a kind if another tile you need is trapped under it and cannot be freed any other way.
• On wide rows, remember that either the left side or the right side is enough. Open one end of a long row and the whole row becomes available from that end.
• Prefer moves that open new tiles over moves that open none. If two pairs are equal, take the one that uncovers more.
• Use flowers and seasons freely. They match any of their group, so they are the safest pairs to spend when you need to take something out.
• When you stall, hint first, undo second, shuffle last. Shuffles are the only limited tool.

What is the daily layout?

Choose Daily in the start panel and everyone gets the same layout and the same deal for that date. The layout rotates through all eight, so one day you may face the small Easy board and another the full Turtle. Your result for the day is kept, and the daily has its own entry on the leaderboard and its own badge.

The deal for a date is built from the date alone, so a friend on another phone will see exactly the same board. A fresh one appears after midnight on your device.

Is there a colour-blind friendly tile style?

Yes. The Clear tile style uses a limited blue, orange and black palette with heavier lines and a white face. Every number tile also carries a corner marker with its rank and a suit shape: a ring for circles, a bar for bamboo and a cross for characters. You can tell tiles apart by shape and number without relying on colour, and it helps on small phones too.

You can switch between Classic and Clear in the start panel and the choice is saved in your browser.

Controls, zoom and playing on a phone

On a touch screen, tap to pick tiles. The whole board is fitted to your screen at the start, from a 320 pixel phone up to a wide monitor. On a small screen the Turtle tiles are tiny, so use the plus and minus buttons or pinch to zoom, and drag to scroll the board when you are zoomed in. Fit returns to the full view.

On a computer you can play with the mouse or entirely from the keyboard: the arrow keys move between free tiles, Enter or Space picks the tile in focus, H shows a hint, U undoes, S shuffles, plus, minus and 0 change the zoom, N starts a new deal and P or Escape pauses. Switching to another tab pauses the clock. Screen readers announce each tile by its name and whether it is free, and key events such as a match or no moves left are read out.

Mahjong, Mahjongg and Shanghai solitaire: are they the same game?

People use all three names for the one-player tile game. Mahjong and Mahjongg are two spellings of the same word, and Shanghai is the name an early commercial version used for the same rules. Solitaire here means one player. This is different from the four-player Mahjong that is played around a table with scoring hands, although it uses the same tiles. If you are looking for that game, this is the solo cousin, not the table game.

A short history of Mahjong Solitaire

The tiles come from the Chinese table game of Mahjong, which became popular in the late nineteenth century. The one-player matching game came much later. A computer version made by Brodie Lockard for the PLATO system at the University of Illinois, around 1981, is usually named as the start, and a version called Shanghai followed in the mid 1980s and spread the idea to home computers.

Since then it has been bundled with operating systems and sold in countless apps. Layouts such as the Turtle became familiar through those versions, and players still swap new shapes. It remains popular because it is calm, has no luck-based traps in the deal when it is built carefully, and can be picked up and put down in minutes.