Mahjong Game

Mahjong Solitaire strips the classic four-player tile game down to a single-player puzzle: clear a stacked layout of 144 tiles by matching identical pairs. There's no opponent and no scoring rush — just working out which tiles you can actually reach and which pairs to take first.

The rule that makes it a puzzle rather than pure luck is which tiles are "free." A tile can only be picked if nothing sits on top of it and at least one of its left or right sides is completely open. Flower tiles and Season tiles bend that rule slightly — any two Flowers, or any two Seasons, count as a match even if they aren't identical. Clear every tile and the board is solved.

Controls

Point-and-click only: click a free tile to select it, then click its matching pair to remove both. No keyboard is needed.

Tips

• Clear the tall stacks first. The tiles piled highest block the most tiles underneath them — leave them too long and you can run out of legal moves before the board is clear.
• Don't take the first match you spot. If more than one pair is available, check which one uncovers more tiles underneath before committing — the wrong pick can wall off a section of the board.
• Work the outer edges inward. The perimeter tiles usually free up faster than the center, and clearing them first opens paths toward the middle of the layout.

Some layouts can shuffle into a genuinely unsolvable position, so if you get stuck with no legal moves left, that's the deal on a fresh deal, not a mistake — restarting is the fix.