How to play Mahjong Solitaire
Mahjong Solitaire is a one-player tile-matching game played with a full set of 144 mahjong tiles, stacked in layers. You clear the table two tiles at a time by pairing matching tiles that are free.
Pick a layout: Pagoda is a four-tier pyramid, Bridge is two low decks laid like brickwork, and Quick is a smaller three-tier stack of 72 tiles for a short break. Your time is the score.
Rules
- Click a free tile, then a matching free tile, and both leave the table. Click a selected tile again to put it down.
- A tile is free when no tile lies on top of it, even partly, and at least one of its long sides (left or right) is open. Tiles that are covered or wedged between two neighbours can’t be picked.
- Most tiles match only an identical tile: dots with dots of the same number, bamboo with bamboo, characters with characters, and each wind and dragon with itself. There are four of each.
- The bonus tiles are looser: any flower matches any other flower, and any season matches any other season.
- Every deal is built so that it can be cleared, but the order matters. Take the wrong pair and you can still get stuck. Undo as far back as you like, or shuffle the tiles still on the table.
- A shuffle re-deals the remaining tiles onto the same spots so that the rest can be cleared again. Hints and shuffles are always allowed, but a game that used either is not ranked on the tops.
- The clock starts with your first click and pauses when you switch tabs. A deal in progress is saved per layout.
Controls
- Click / tap
- Pick a free tile; pick a matching one to remove the pair
- Arrows / WASD
- Jump between free tiles; Space or Enter picks
- Z / Ctrl+Z
- Undo (as many steps as you like)
- H
- Hint: shows a removable pair
- R
- Shuffle the remaining tiles
- P
- Pause
- N · 1 2 3
- New deal · switch layout
Tips
- Work from the top and from the ends of long rows: those are the tiles holding everything else down.
- When three of a kind are free, think before pairing. Take the two that free the most tiles and keep the third for its partner.
- If all four of a kind are free at once, clear them both right away, since no other choice depends on them.
- Don’t leave two matching tiles stacked on top of each other. The bottom one can never be freed while its partner sits on it.
Mahjong Solitaire strategy
Count all four
Most faces come in groups of four, and on Quick the deal uses whole groups, so any face on the table has four copies. Before taking a pair, find the other two. If both are already free, take either pair, nothing depends on it. If one of the other two lies under a long stack, keep a free copy waiting for it. Flowers match any flower and seasons any season, so those can wait while you deal with the stricter faces.
Open the long rows
A tile is free only if its left or right side is open, so in a long row only the two end tiles can be taken. The middle of a twelve or fourteen tile row is locked until you eat inwards from the ends. Prefer pairs that shorten the longest rows, and pairs that uncover a tile on the layer below. On Bridge, the arches split the open middle rows into short runs, which gives you extra free ends there.
Track the last two of a kind
Once a face is down to its final two copies, it has no flexibility left: both must be free at the same moment. If one is free now and the other is wedged in the middle of a long row or under a higher tier, you are not stuck, but every tile pinning the hidden copy has become urgent. Keep a mental list of faces with only two copies left and steer your next pairs towards releasing them.
Use undo, not help
Hints and shuffles keep a game off the tops, but undo does not. When the table says you are stuck, step back a few pairs and look for the choice that went wrong, usually a three-way pick where you took the wrong two. Each undo costs only the seconds it takes, while a shuffle or hint costs the ranking. If you only want to finish, a shuffle always leaves the remaining tiles clearable.
About Mahjong Solitaire
Tile-matching solitaire with mahjong tiles took off in 1986, when Brodie Lockard’s game for Activision put a layered stack of tiles on the Macintosh. Lockard had first written it on the PLATO system in the early eighties. Clones and variants soon spread to every home computer and later came bundled with Windows, and the turtle-shaped pyramid became the shape most people picture.
This is an original browser version. The Pagoda, Bridge and Quick layouts were designed for this site, and every deal is generated backwards from an empty table, so a full solution always exists. The tiles are drawn in ink on paper: suits are told apart by their pips and characters, not by colour, and a small corner number helps if you don’t read the characters.
Questions
Can every deal be solved?
Yes. Each deal is generated by playing the game in reverse: two tiles at a time are placed on spots that would both be free, so at least one complete order of moves clears the table. You can still get stuck by choosing pairs in the wrong order, which is what undo and shuffle are for.
Which tiles match?
Identical tiles match: the same number in the same suit (dots, bamboo or characters), or the same wind or dragon. The flowers (plum, orchid, chrysanthemum, bamboo) all match each other, and so do the four seasons.
Why didn’t my time make the leaderboard?
Only clears without hints or shuffles are ranked, per layout. Undo is fine. Games with help still count in your local history and stats.
Does it save my game?
Yes. A deal in progress is saved in your browser for each layout separately, and the clock pauses while the tab is hidden.