Mahjong Solitaire

🕹️ How to play

1. How to start a game: The page opens on a dealt Courtyard layout — no menus, no start button. A one-line rule sits above the table and one matching pair is gently pulsing. Tap those two tiles and they fly off, uncovering the tiles beneath. Keep matching pairs of free tiles until all 144 are gone.
2. Which tiles are free: A tile is free when nothing is stacked on top of it (not even overlapping a corner) and at least one of its left or right sides is open. Blocked tiles are dimmed. Tap one anyway and it shakes, the tiles blocking it are outlined in red, and the bar above says why: a tile on top, or blocked on both sides.
3. Choosing the second tile: The selected tile lifts with a gold edge, and the other copies of that tile are marked — a jade ring on copies you can take now, a small jade dot on copies still covered. When three or four copies are free, pick the pair that frees the most new tiles. Tapping a different face simply selects it instead; tapping the selected tile again deselects it.
4. When there are no matches left: When the match counter hits zero the bar turns amber and the buttons switch to Undo, Shuffle, Restart and New game. Undo is unlimited. Shuffle redeals the remaining faces onto the same spots and guarantees the board is still solvable. Neither costs points or ads — they only lower the star rating.

📖 Rules & variants

Mahjong solitaire uses a 144-tile set: Characters, Dots (circles) and Bamboo, 1 to 9, four of each; the four Winds and three Dragons, four of each; plus four Flowers and four Seasons. Ordinary tiles only match an identical tile. Any flower matches any other flower and any season matches any other season, but a flower never matches a season. Clear all 72 pairs to win — there is no score and no countdown.

Free tiles are the whole game: a tile is free when no tile on the layer above overlaps it, and its left or right side (at least one) has no tile touching it. Tiles above or below it on the same layer don't matter. When a tile is both covered and blocked on both sides, the game reports "covered" first, because the top tile has to go before the sides matter.

Mahjong solitaire is not mahjong connect. In connect (onet / shisen-sho style) all tiles lie flat and two matching tiles must be joined by a path with at most two turns. In mahjong solitaire tiles are stacked in layers and no path is drawn — two matching tiles can be cleared from anywhere on the table as long as both are free.

Every deal is built backwards: pairs of free tiles are lifted off the full layout until it is empty, and faces are then assigned along that order, so walking it forwards is a complete winning line. That's why each deal is marked Solvable. Shuffle uses the same generator on the tiles still in play. The one case no shuffle can fix is a tile stacked directly on its only remaining partner — the Shuffle button is then disabled and the reason is shown.

The hint really searches the current position (for up to about 1.5 seconds). If it finds a full solution it highlights the first pair and says the board is still solvable after it; if the board is too big to finish searching it suggests the pair that frees the most tiles, labelled as a guess; if it proves the board can no longer be cleared it says so and suggests undoing or shuffling.

Ratings: three stars for a pure solve with no hints and no shuffles, two stars with hints but no shuffles, one star for a clear that needed a shuffle. Undo never affects the rating. The clock starts on your first tap, pauses while the tab is in the background and is always shown on the result card; the in-game timer is off by default. Best times only count clears without shuffles.

Five layouts: Courtyard (one star, the most free tiles), Twin Pavilions (two stars, two tall stacks with a valley), Lattice Window (three stars, long bars with few exits) and Towers (four stars, four deep five-layer stacks) are original portrait layouts, at most eight tiles wide, so tiles stay about 44×56 px on a 390-px phone. The Turtle is the classic wide layout; on a phone it plays best in landscape.

Every game has a code such as K7Q2M9X-3HF (the last three characters bind the layout). Send the code or your result link to a friend and they get the exact same deal to race against your time. The daily game is generated from the local date — everyone gets the same deal that day — with no network request. Your stats are stored only in this browser.

Illustrated: which tiles are free, and which pair to take

Two 1-Dots are stacked in the top-left corner. Pair the other two first and that stack is left covering itself — game over. Take the top one first (with either of the others) and the one beneath it becomes free for the last match. The hint always avoids the losing pair.

Looking for the flat version where you draw a line between tiles? Try Onet / mahjong connect (the path may turn at most twice).

❓ FAQ