Mahjong Solitaire

How to play

1. How does a mahjong solitaire round start?: The tower builds itself as soon as the page opens: tile backs drop in layer by layer, then a wave flips them face up, all in under two seconds. Tap anywhere during the build to jump straight to the finished tower — that tap never selects a tile. The first round uses the 36-tile Pavilion; open the menu and choose Change layout for Twin Peaks or High Tower.
2. Which tiles can you tap, and how do you clear them?: Only bright tiles are free: a tile is free when nothing sits on top of it and at least one of its left or right sides is open. Covered or side-blocked tiles are dimmed. Tap a bright tile — it lifts with an amber outline — then tap an identical bright tile. The pair flies together and clears, and any tile it was holding down lights up on the spot.
3. Why does nothing happen when I tap a tile?: A tile that is not free shakes once and a line under the tower explains why: another tile is on top of it, or it is blocked on both left and right. The tiles in the way get a dashed red outline for six tenths of a second. Tapping a different free tile after selecting one switches your selection and tells you the two did not match; tapping the selected tile again deselects it.
4. What if no pairs are left, and how do you win?: When no pair is open, a stuck panel rises above the controls. Shuffle re-deals only the tiles still in play onto the same spots and is guaranteed to leave a solvable tower; you can also undo a step or start a new deal. Hint lights up an open pair. Clear every tile to win: the summary shows your time and how many hints, undos and shuffles you used, with a clean-clear seal when all three are zero.

Rules & variants

Mahjong solitaire has one rule: two identical free tiles clear together. A tile is free when two things are true — nothing is stacked on top of it, even partly, and its left side or its right side is open. A tile pinned on both sides is not free even with nothing on top; a tile with open sides but something on top is not free either. Neighbours above and below on the same layer never block, only left and right do. Taking the tower apart from the top down and from the ends inwards is the whole rhythm of the game.

The tile set: 34 regular kinds — Characters, Bamboo and Dots from 1 to 9, the four Winds and the three Dragons — four of each, plus two special groups: four Flowers (plum, orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum) and four Seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter). Regular tiles only match an identical tile. Any Flower matches any other Flower and any Season matches any other Season even though the pictures differ, but a Flower never matches a Season. Every Flower and every Season carries the same small group badge in its top right corner, so the family is visible at a glance.

Three layouts: Pavilion has 36 tiles on two layers (eight regular kinds plus the Flowers) and is the default for a first game; Twin Peaks has 72 tiles on three layers with two peaks and is the fixed layout for the daily deal; High Tower has the full traditional 144 tiles on six layers, all 34 kinds plus Flowers and Seasons. Every layout is at most six tiles wide, so the whole tower fits a phone held upright. The layout is never rotated, because left and right are part of the rule.

Why every deal is solvable: tiles are not scattered at random and left to luck. The game first dismantles the empty layout backwards — at each step it removes two spots that are free at that moment — and then drops the tiles pair by pair into that order. Whether a spot is free depends only on which spots are occupied, never on the tile faces, so replaying that order always works. Every deal code therefore starts with at least one route to an empty table; getting stuck means you took a different order, not that the deal was impossible.

Shuffles and getting stuck: you are stuck when no pair of free tiles matches. There are two kinds. If the tiles are simply badly distributed, Shuffle re-deals the remaining tiles onto the same spots and guarantees the tower is still solvable afterwards. If the last tiles are stacked into a single column, only the top one can ever be free and no shuffle can separate them — the stuck panel then hides the Shuffle button and asks you to undo a few steps or start a new deal. There is no losing state: being stuck never ends the round.

Undo, hints and the clean clear: undo is unlimited and steps back one action at a time, shuffles included, putting every tile back exactly where it was. Hint lights up the open pair that frees the most new tiles — a strong move, but not a promise that it is the only way through. None of these cost points; the summary simply counts them. Clear the tower with zero hints, undos and shuffles and the card is stamped Clean clear, with a separate best time for clean clears.

Deal codes and the daily deal: every round has a code such as 41739205-a — up to eight digits of seed and a letter for the layout (a Pavilion, b Twin Peaks, c High Tower). The summary card and the menu both have Copy deal link, which hands anyone the exact same tower; the menu also takes a typed code. The daily deal is always Twin Peaks and its seed comes from your local date inside the browser, with no network request, so everyone who opens it that day plays the same tower.

Strategy tips that actually help: free the tiles sitting on the most other tiles first, and the end tiles of long rows, because they release the most; when all four copies of a kind are free clear two pairs at once, and when only three are free think about which one to keep so the fourth is not stranded deep in the stack; avoid clearing a row down to a single middle tile that will be pinned on both sides; and save Flowers and Seasons, which match any member of their group, for spots that are hard to open. When stuck, undoing two or three moves teaches more than shuffling straight away.

How it differs from tile connect and from mahjong itself: mahjong solitaire borrows the tiles but has nothing to do with the four-player game of melds and winning hands — it is a single-player matching puzzle. Unlike tile connect, where one flat layer of tiles clears when a path with at most two turns joins them, mahjong solitaire stacks tiles in layers and only asks whether a tile is uncovered with an open side. All tile art here is drawn for this site; no commercial layout names or artwork are used.

Three things for a first game: after the build, one pair of tiles softly pulses — that is a pair you can clear right away, and the guide disappears after your first match. If you sit on the same position for 20 seconds a pair starts to pulse, and 20 seconds later the Hint button glows, at most twice per round. Dimming of tiles you cannot tap is on by default for Pavilion; once you can read the tower yourself, switch it off in the menu.

FAQ