Mahjong Solitaire Game

How Mahjong Solitaire works

Mahjong Solitaire is a single-player tile-matching logic puzzle. The board begins with 144 tiles arranged across several overlapping layers. You may remove two tiles only when their faces match and both tiles are free. A tile is free when no higher tile overlaps it and at least one of its horizontal sides is open. The goal is to remove the entire board. This sounds simple, but the layered geometry means a legal pair can expose useful tiles, unlock a blocked row, or consume a face that would have opened a better route later. The puzzle therefore combines visual scanning with short planning decisions rather than pure speed.

Guaranteed-solvable deals instead of blind random stacks

A random assignment of matching faces to a layered shape can create an impossible starting position or a board that becomes unsalvageable immediately. This specialist does not rely on that kind of uncontrolled random deal. Each of the twelve layouts has a topology-only solver that repeatedly identifies tiles that satisfy the actual free-tile rule. The build process records a complete sequence of seventy-two legal pair removals. For a new deal, the matching face pairs are shuffled and assigned to those legal removal pairs. Because the sequence reaches zero tiles before any faces are attached, every fresh deal has at least one complete solution path by construction.

Twelve real layered layouts

Turtle, Pyramid, Terraces, Fortress, Bridge, Dragon, Towers, Diamond, Cross, Waves, Canyon and Pagoda each contain 144 physical positions and 72 removable pairs. Their geometry changes which tiles begin free, where upper layers block lower tiles and how quickly side routes open. The game keeps these as selectable board shapes inside one product rather than creating thin layout-clone pages.

Hints, Undo/Redo and solvable Shuffle

Hint searches only the tiles that are currently free and points to a matching legal pair. Undo restores the most recently removed pair. Solvable Shuffle is stronger: if your choices leave no matching free pair, it keeps the exact remaining face counts, recomputes a complete topology-removal sequence for the remaining physical positions, and redistributes the remaining matching pairs along that sequence. That gives the current position a fresh guaranteed route without resetting the entire board. Hint, Undo, Redo, Planner, Restart and Shuffle are coaching tools, so using any of them marks the run Assisted and protects clean personal-best timing.

Clean personal bests and honest local stats

The game tracks games started, boards cleared, clean clears, per-layout clean best times and a separate Daily streak in browser-local storage. A clear that used Hint, Undo or Shuffle still counts as a clear because the puzzle was completed, but it cannot overwrite a clean best. This avoids the common problem where a heavily assisted run appears to be the player’s fastest unassisted performance. No account, cloud leaderboard or global rank is claimed. The statistics describe only what this browser has actually recorded.

Tile faces and accessibility

The tile inventory now follows the standard 144-tile composition: 27 suited faces, four Winds and three Dragons appear four times each, plus four unique Flowers and four unique Seasons. Ordinary tiles require identical faces; any Flower may match any Flower and any Season may match any Season. Every tile also receives a visible symbol and accessible label. Blocked tiles are visually muted and are disabled as controls. Free tiles remain real buttons that can receive keyboard focus, and focus-visible styling makes keyboard movement clear. On smaller screens the labels simplify so the 144-tile board stays readable without horizontal scrolling.

Why planning matters

A free pair is legal, but legal does not always mean strategically useful. Removing a pair that exposes two new tiles is often stronger than removing a pair sitting at the ends of already-open rows. Upper-layer tiles are especially valuable because one tile can cover several lower positions. The Board Coach therefore encourages an order of thought: clear tiles that cover others, release long rows, preserve multiple copies of common faces when possible, and use Shuffle only when the position no longer offers a matching free pair. The game does not pretend there is one perfect move at every turn; it teaches the structural reasons behind useful choices.

Mobile and desktop play

The board is rendered from normalized topology coordinates instead of a fixed desktop pixel map. That lets the same twelve-layout geometry scale into a phone viewport while preserving relative overlaps and layer depth. The mobile layout compresses tile labels and controls but keeps the free-versus-blocked distinction and the same game engine. Desktop provides more breathing room for the full suit labels. Autosave stores the current deal, removed tiles, face assignment, assisted state and start time so an interrupted puzzle can resume on the same device.

Local-first design

All deal generation, free-tile checks, matching, hint search, shuffle reconstruction, Daily selection, autosave and statistics run in the browser. The game does not need a backend or paid API to decide whether a move is legal. That matters for both cost and trust: the release can independently test the same topology and matching logic that the player receives. It also means Practice can keep generating new deterministic deals without waiting for a server request.

Start playing

The playable specialist is the source of truth for move legality and board state. Open the game, choose a layout in Practice or use the Daily tab, then look for two matching tiles whose top surfaces are uncovered and whose left or right sides are open. If you want to study the position rather than race, Hint and solvable Shuffle are always available and are clearly recorded as assistance.