Mahjong solitaire, the classic way
This is the tile-matching game that came with so many computers: 144 mahjong tiles stacked in the shape of a turtle, five layers high, with one tile on top. Find two matching tiles that are free, take them away, and keep going until the table is clear. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to install, and your game is saved in this browser if you need to stop.
Mahjong solitaire uses the tiles of the four-player game of mahjong, but it is a puzzle for one. You do not need to know the rules of mahjong, or read the Chinese characters: every number tile carries a large number in its corner, and every wind tile its letter.
Every deal can be cleared
When the tiles are dealt completely at random, a board can be impossible from the start: the last two tiles of a kind can end up stacked on each other, and no amount of skill will clear it. Here, every deal is built so that a full clearing exists before you see it.
You can still get stuck by taking the wrong pair, because there are four of most tiles and the choice of which two to match matters. When that happens, Hint tells you, Undo takes back as many moves as you like, and Shuffle re-deals the tiles that are left so that they can all be cleared again.
How to play
Clear the board by taking away matching tiles in pairs. You can only take a tile that is free: nothing lies on top of it, and its left side or its right side is open. Pick one free tile, then a free tile that matches it, and both disappear. The full rules, with pictures.
- Matching tiles are identical: two East Winds, two 5 of Bamboo. The exceptions are the flowers and the seasons: any flower matches any other flower, and any season any season. Every tile and its name.
- Hint shows a pair you can take and explains why, in one sentence. It always picks a pair that keeps the whole board clearable.
- Undo takes back your last match, as often as you like.
- Shuffle re-deals the tiles that are left so that they can all be cleared again. Use it when no free pairs are left.
Controls
Click or tap a tile to pick it, then click or tap its partner. With a keyboard, Tab moves between the free tiles and Enter or Space picks one. H asks for a hint, U undoes, S shuffles and Esc lets go of a picked tile.
Tiles you cannot take yet are shown a little darker, so the free ones stand out. You can turn that off in Settings, where you can also make the text larger.
Large, clear tiles
The board grows to fill your screen, and the tiles are drawn sharp at any size, so they stay easy to read on a laptop, a desktop or a tablet. On a phone held upright, the Turtle is wide, so the board can be scrolled sideways; Pyramid and Easy are narrower and give you bigger tiles.
Other ways to play
Daily Mahjong is one new deal a day, the same for everyone, with a result you can share. Pyramid stacks 120 tiles in four square layers. Easy has 72 extra-large tiles in two layers, and every tile has exactly one partner, so there is never a choice to get wrong.