Mahjong Solitaire

How to play

144 tiles are stacked in layers. Tap two tiles that match — the same suit tile, the same honor tile, or (for the flower and season tiles) any one of the four flowers with any other flower, or any season with any other season — and both are removed. You can only pick up a tile that's "free": nothing sits directly on top of it, and at least one of its left or right neighbors is already gone. A tile boxed in on both sides, or buried under another tile, can't be touched yet no matter what it is. Clear every tile from the board to win.

Every deal here is generated to be genuinely solvable — the tiles are placed by working backward from a guaranteed clearing sequence, not shuffled at random and hoped for, so you'll never hit a dead deal with tiles left that simply can't be matched.

Tips for a stronger game

Clear the topmost layers first when you have a choice. A tile sitting on top of others is blocking whatever's underneath it from ever becoming free, so removing it opens up the board rather than just taking an easy match.

Don't take the first match you spot if a more urgent one is available. If a tile only has one matching partner left on the board and that partner is itself hard to free, go looking for that pair before it gets buried further by other moves.

When several matches are available, prefer the one that frees up the most new tiles underneath it — clearing a tile from the middle of a layer, with tiles on both sides waiting, does more for your options than clearing one from an edge that wasn't blocking anything.