How to play mahjong solitaire

Mahjong solitaire is a one-player matching game played with mahjong tiles. The tiles are stacked in a layout, and you remove them two at a time. Clear the whole board and you win.

The rules

1. Match pairs. Pick two identical tiles to remove them. Any two flowers match, and any two seasons match.
2. Only free tiles. A tile can be picked when nothing sits on top of it and its left or right side is open.
3. Clear the board. The game is won when every tile is gone. If no free pair is left, the game is stuck.

Which tiles are free?

Think of sliding a tile out sideways. It can only slide if there’s no tile directly on top and no tile touching it on at least one side. Tiles at the ends of a row are often free; tiles in the middle of a row are not, until their neighbors are gone. The ○ button in the game dims every tile you can’t take yet.

Strategy

• Unstack first. Tiles on the top layers cover several tiles each. Clearing them opens the most moves.
• Open long rows. In the Turtle, the end tiles and the single tiles on the far left and right hold up whole rows.
• Take all four. When all four tiles of a kind are free, remove both pairs; there’s no way to go wrong.
• Count before matching three. With three free tiles of a kind, check which of them blocks something else, and leave the one that doesn’t.
• Watch stacked twins. If two matching tiles sit on top of each other, the bottom one can only be freed by matching the top one with a different tile.

Hints, undo and shuffle

Hint highlights a free pair. Undo takes back your last match, as many times as you like. Shuffle rearranges the tiles still on the board into a new position that can still be won. On a keyboard, press H, U or S.

Where the game comes from

Computer mahjong solitaire was created by Brodie Lockard and published as Shanghai by Activision in 1986. Its stacked layout, now called the Turtle, became the standard and later shipped with Windows as Mahjong Titans. The four-player game it borrows its tiles from is much older; see how to play mahjong.

Questions

What makes a tile free in mahjong solitaire?

Nothing is on top of it, and it has an open side on the left or the right. A tile with neighbors on both sides is blocked, even if nothing is on top.

Do flowers and seasons have to match exactly?

No. Any flower matches any other flower, and any season matches any other season. Every other tile must match exactly.

What happens when there are no moves left?

The game is stuck. You can undo moves to try a different path, shuffle the remaining tiles into a new arrangement, or start again.

Is mahjong solitaire the same as mahjong?

No. Mahjong is a four-player game of building hands, like rummy. Mahjong solitaire is a one-player matching puzzle that uses the same tiles.