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.
All 72 tiles sit in a four-layer stepped pyramid. The bottom layer is 8 tiles wide and 4 rows deep (32 tiles). The next layer is 6 by 4 (24 tiles), then 4 by 3 (12 tiles), and the top is a 2 by 2 block of 4 tiles. Every layer sits on the same grid as the one below, so a tile counts as covered only when another tile sits exactly on top of it. Upper layers are drawn shifted slightly up and to the left so you can see the depth. Tiles that are not currently free are dimmed.
The 18 designs go into a deck of four copies each, which is shuffled with a Fisher-Yates shuffle using your browser's random number generator and laid onto the pyramid in order, bottom layer first. There is no seed and no daily board; every New press deals a fresh random layout.
Click a free tile to select it, click it again to deselect it. If the second tile you click does not match, it simply becomes the new selection. Matching two identical tiles removes both.
When no free pair is left on the board, a message appears suggesting Shuffle or Undo.
There is no score. The counter shows how many pairs are left, and a timer runs until the board is cleared. Nothing is stored in your browser, so reloading the page deals a new board.
Mahjong Solitaire is a single-player tile-matching game — not the four-player gambling game of the same name. You clear a layered layout of tiles by matching identical pairs until the board is empty. The Board Gaming Hub build uses a compact 72-tile set drawn from two mahjong suits: Bamboo and Characters, nine faces each, four copies of every face. It runs in one HTML page with hint, undo, and shuffle.
You can only remove a tile that is free. A tile is free when two conditions are both true:
Blocked tiles are dimmed. Freeing them is the whole puzzle: every pair you remove may open the tiles that were leaning on it.
Two free tiles match only if they show the exact same glyph. In this build there are no flower or season groups — a 3-Bamboo pairs only with another 3-Bamboo, never with a Character tile that merely looks similar. Because every face has four copies, each glyph forms two possible pairs on a full board.
The fastest way to lose is matching the first pair you see. A greedy match can bury a tile whose only partner is now locked. Instead:
Use HINT to highlight a legal pair when you are stuck, and UNDO to step back after a match that locked the board. If no legal moves remain among the free tiles, SHUFFLE reassigns the faces on the remaining tiles so the game can continue. A clean solve uses shuffle sparingly — treat it as a rescue, not a strategy.
For another relaxed solo game with a similar pace, try Klondike Solitaire — the Klondike guide covers its strategy. Prefer numbers? 2048 is a quick palate cleanser.