Match pairs of identical free tiles to remove them. A tile is free when nothing rests on top of it and either its left or right side is unblocked. Clear all 72 tiles to win.
Plan ahead — bad early matches can lock the board. When you see four of a kind exposed, match all four; otherwise, match pairs that unblock the most tiles. Use HINT when stuck, or SHUFFLE if no moves remain.
Mahjong Solitaire is a single-player tile-matching puzzle played with mahjong tiles. Match pairs of identical free tiles to remove them from a stacked layout. Despite the shared name and tiles, this is a different game from full Mahjong (the four-player draw-and-discard game). Mahjong Solitaire was popularized on early personal computers in the 1980s, notably as Shanghai in 1986.
Tap two matching free tiles to remove them as a pair. A tile is free when (1) no tile sits on top of it AND (2) at least one of its left or right edges has no tile directly beside it. Win by clearing all 72 tiles from the layout. You can lock yourself out by removing tiles in the wrong order, so plan ahead — tiles buried deeper require their cover removed first.
This build uses a streamlined two-suit set. Tiles match only when their design is exactly identical — there are no Winds, Dragons, Dots, Flowers, or Seasons, and no any-flower-matches-any-flower shortcut.
| Category | Tiles | Count | Match rule |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bamboo (1–9) | One suit, 4 of each | 36 | Exact tile |
| Characters (1–9) | One suit, 4 of each | 36 | Exact tile |
| Total | 18 designs × 4 copies | 72 | Identical glyph |
Tap two matching free tiles to remove the pair. Repeat until the board is empty. A tile is free when nothing is on top of it AND its left or right side is open.
(1) No tile sits on top of it. (2) At least one of its left or right edges has no neighbor. A tile blocked on both sides is not selectable until a neighbor is removed.
Two suits only: Bamboo (1–9) and Characters (1–9), 4 copies of each of the 18 designs, for 72 tiles total. Tiles pair only with an exactly identical tile — there are no Winds, Dragons, Dots, Flowers, or Seasons in this version.
Each new board is reshuffled until at least one opening match exists, so there is always a legal first move — but full solvability is not guaranteed, and a wrong-order removal can still strand tiles. Use Shuffle to re-randomize the remaining tiles or Undo to back out of a dead end.
Full Mahjong is a four-player turn-based draw-and-discard game similar to Rummy, scored by hand value. Mahjong Solitaire is a single-player tile-matching puzzle. They share the tile set; nothing else.
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