Mahjong Solitaire

What is Mahjong Solitaire?

Mahjong Solitaire is the classic tile-matching puzzle: 144 tiles are stacked in a shape, and you clear the board by removing matching pairs of free tiles. This version runs in your browser on phones, tablets and computers, with hand-drawn tiles that stay crisp at any size and a 3D stacked look that makes the layers easy to read.

Every deal is built backwards from a winning order, so each new game can be cleared. Pick the classic Turtle or one of five other layouts (Pyramid, Fortress, Dragon, Bridge and Tower), and use Hint when you're stuck: it points to a pair that keeps a winning line open. Undo, solvable shuffles, a timer, statistics and an automatically saved game are all included, free and with no sign-up.

How to play Mahjong Solitaire

1. Choose a layout at the top. Turtle is the classic. On a phone held upright, wide layouts are dealt a quarter turn round so the tiles stay big.
2. Tap a free tile to select it, then tap a matching free tile to remove both. A tile is free when no tile sits on top of it and its left or right side is open. Free tiles are bright; blocked tiles are shaded.
3. Tiles match when they are identical. The exceptions are the bonus tiles: any flower matches any flower, and any season matches any season.
4. Watch the Pairs counter: it shows how many matching pairs are free right now. Hint highlights one, and Undo takes back your last move.
5. If no pairs are left, Shuffle rearranges the remaining tiles into a new layout that can still be cleared. Remove all 144 tiles to win.

Mahjong Solitaire tips and strategy

• Work from the top and the ends: tiles on high stacks and at the ends of long rows block the most, so freeing them first opens the board.
• When three tiles of a kind are free, think before you pick a pair: keep the one whose removal would free nothing useful for later.
• When all four tiles of a kind are free, remove both pairs straight away. It can never hurt.
• Don't rush to clear easy pairs in open space. Pairs that unlock buried tiles are worth more.
• On the Turtle, the long middle rows are blocked by the single tiles at each end; clearing those early opens two rows at once.
• On a small phone, Pyramid, Fortress and Tower give the biggest tiles, and Full screen makes every layout bigger.

Mahjong solitaire rules in detail

A full set has 144 tiles: three suits (dots, bamboo and characters) numbered one to nine with four copies of each, four copies of each wind (east, south, west and north) and of each dragon (red, green and white), plus four flowers and four seasons. Suit, wind and dragon tiles only match an identical tile. The bonus tiles are looser: any flower pairs with any flower and any season with any season.

A tile can be removed only when it is free. That means nothing rests on it, even partly, and at least one of its long sides, left or right, has no neighbouring tile on the same layer. A tile squeezed between two neighbours stays locked until one of them goes, which is why the ends of each row matter so much.

Why every deal here can be won

Many mahjong solitaire games deal tiles at random, and a fair share of those deals can't be cleared whatever you do. Here each deal is built in reverse: the generator takes tiles off the full layout two free tiles at a time and gives each couple a matching pair, so the order it used is a guaranteed solution. We test thousands of deals for every layout to make sure of it.

You can still paint yourself into a corner by pairing the wrong tiles. When that happens, Hint tells you if a winning line is gone, Undo walks back your moves, and Shuffle deals the remaining tiles into a new arrangement that can be cleared.

Mahjong solitaire strategy

Mahjong solitaire is mostly about choice. Early on there are usually several pairs available, and the best one is the pair that frees the most new tiles: tops of stacks, then ends of long rows. Keep an eye on tiles of the same kind that are buried under each other; if one copy sits on top of another, you'll need the other two copies free to clear them, so don't spend those two elsewhere.

Count copies too. Each kind has exactly four tiles, so once two are gone the remaining two must pair with each other. If they're both stuck in the same stack, plan to free that stack before it's too late.

Mahjong Solitaire FAQ