Mahjong Solitaire
Pair free tiles and peel the classic 144 tile turtle board.
FAQ
Which tiles can I remove?
How do flower and season tiles match?
What happens when no pair is left?
Where are my results stored?
How to use
- Spot free tiles
A tile is free when nothing covers it and at least one side is open. Scan the outer layer first, because identical free faces are the only pairs you can remove right now.
- Tap two matching faces
Your first tap highlights a free tile and the second tap removes the pair. Tap the same tile again to cancel. Any flower pairs with any season tile, which keeps late boards flexible.
- Use hints and undo
Hint highlights one removable pair and each round grants five. Undo has no limit, so it reverses your last removal or even a reshuffle while you experiment.
- Dead ends and reshuffles
When no free pair exists the board reshuffles itself and guarantees a new pair afterwards. Manual shuffles share the same budget of five per round, so spend both wisely.
- Keyboard and touch
Move with the arrow keys, confirm with Enter, then use H hint, S shuffle, U undo and P pause. On touch you simply tap tiles. The timer starts on your first tap.
About this tool
Mahjong Solitaire is a classic single player clearing game. One hundred and forty four tiles sit in the turtle layout, stacked in several layers. A tile can only leave the board while it is free: nothing covers it, and one horizontal side is open. Two free tiles with the same face form a pair, and any flower pairs with any season. Removing tiles unlocks the ones they were holding down, so good play peels the board from the outside in. Clearing all seventy two pairs wins the round, and the fastest time per layout is kept as your best.
This site ships two layouts as the difficulty levels. The classic board holds all 144 tiles, including the three number suits, the winds, the dragons and the flower and season tiles. The compact board drops the bamboo suit and plays faster with 108 tiles. Both share the same rules and aids: five hints and five reshuffles per round, plus unlimited undo. The timer starts with your first tap and pauses when you leave the tab. Every tile face is drawn with Unicode mahjong characters, no images are loaded, and your best times stay in the browser.
How it works
The turtle layout records every tile with layer, row and column coordinates. Each tile fills one cell and leans half a cell on every side, and any upper tile must rest on tiles of the layer below. Because positions are pure geometry, the free check is a small scan. A neighbour within one cell on the same layer blocks that side, and any tile directly above blocks the whole tile. The game walks the board with these rules to list every removable pair in milliseconds. The same scan powers the hint button and the dead end detection.
Reshuffling keeps every remaining face in play. Faces only swap between the tiles still on the board, so nothing is created or lost. After each permutation the game verifies that at least one free pair exists, and tries again otherwise. A shuffle never leaves you with nothing to do. That guarantee turns a dead end into a small setback instead of a lost round. Clear times are stored per layout, and the number of hints and shuffles you spend is the real score for careful players. Fewer aids spent means better planning, and patient clears feel very different from lucky ones.
When to use it
- A calm coffee break
The compact 108 tile board wraps up in five to eight minutes, which fits a coffee break or a commute leg. The page opens straight into play with no account and no download. Clearing a few pairs is enough to reset a tired mind, and the timer pauses the moment you switch tabs.
- Learning tile faces with kids
The character, bamboo and circle suits mirror real mahjong faces, so children meet the same glyphs their families play with. Parents can explain why a covered tile must wait, which trains observation of overlap and order. The wild flowers keep early rounds forgiving while the scanning habit takes root.
- Visual search practice
Dozens of similar faces compete for attention, so finding one matching pair is honest visual search work. Saving the hints for the very end forces a full scan of the outer ring first. Players who keep that habit usually read busy screens faster in everyday work too.
Tips & tricks
- Clear the head and tail before the middle, and prefer the pair that frees the most tiles.
- Four copies exist of every suited face, so keep one in reserve instead of exposing all of them.
- The eight flower and season tiles match each other, so spend them when the board is tight.
- Save the hints for the endgame and scan the outer ring yourself first.
Things to watch
- Grabbing the nearest pair
The most convenient pair is not always the safest one. Removing a tile can pin down the only path into a buried column, and the mistake only shows several moves later. Before every removal, look at what the pair is holding down and prefer the pair that frees the most tiles.
- Treating shuffle as a fix-all
Spending a reshuffle on the first stall empties the budget long before the endgame. Most stalls dissolve once one or two blocking pairs are cleared. Confirm that no free pair exists at all, then reshuffle, so the five charges cover the moments that genuinely need them.
- Wasting the wild flowers
Eight flower and season tiles match each other freely, which makes them the most flexible keys on the board. Clearing them all in the opening throws that flexibility away. Keep a few for the middle game, when the board is tight and an extra open side is worth a lot.