Playing Mahjongg Solitaire

Game Basics

At its simplest, Mahjongg Solitaire is a match-and-remove type of game. Matching two tiles together, by clicking on them sequentially, causes them to be removed from the board. This proceeds until there are no more tiles on the board or until there are no more unblocked matches remaining.

Blocked Tiles

Only tiles at the ends of horizontal rows can be selected. All other tiles in the row are blocked and may not be selected until enough tiles are removed that they themselves are at the end of the horizontal row.

For example, the following is a sample row of tiles:

And now we'll highlight the unblocked tiles in blue:

Of course, neither of the unblocked tiles match, so if these were the only tiles on this board, we'd have lost.

In addition to horizontal blocking, tiles may be stacked on top of one another completely obscuring the tiles beneath. In these cases, the tiles underneath are also blocked, but otherwise each row acts independently.

For example, the following contains a row of four tiles sitting on top of a row of six tiles.

There are four unblocked tiles as highlighted in blue in the following image.

If the tile with a "6" on it could be magically removed then the two tiles with "8" could be matched and removed. In addition, removing the "6" and top "8" would reveal the tiles underneath them.

It is also possible for a single tile to block more than one tile. In the following example, only three tiles are unblocked.

The following image highlights the unblocked tiles in blue.

In the initial default board layout, there is also a stacked tile that blocks four tiles underneath it. A simplified example is shown below:

The tile with the "F2" on it blocks the four tiles underneath it. The following image highlights the unblocked tiles in blue.

Tip:For new players it is sometimes helpful to turn on the "Highlight unblocked tiles" option.

Short Blocking Walkthrough

Just to solidify the concepts a bit, here is a complete board:

And here it is with the unblocked tiles highlighted in blue.

The initial layout has alot of unblocked tiles. However, this particular layout only has 4 or 5 potential matches. If we select the upper left tile with a red "6" on it then we can match it to the left middle tile with a red "6" on it and are left with the following board. Notice how we unblock three tiles in the process.

We could now continue by knocking off the red dragons, 5 yin-yangs, and so on. You're probably starting to get the idea about selectable tiles so lets talk about some of the stranger matching details.

Matching

For the most part, to be considered a match, both tiles must be identical. For example, the "red dragon" must match another "red dragon", "3 yin-yangs" must match another "3 yin-yangs" and so on. There are two types of tiles that are exceptions to this rule: the flowers and the seasons.

The flowers are the tiles that I haven't finished drawing yet and are denoted by "F1", "F2", "F3", and "F4". Any of these tiles will match each other, so for example, "F1" and "F2" are a valid match.

The seasons should be pretty obvious since they all have a picture of a tree with the season name underneath. Like the flowers, any of the seasons will match another season. For example, "Winter" and "Spring" would be an appropriate match.

Tip:When learning to play, use "Show available moves" to have the game highlight the currently available matches. For quick access, Control-S will select this option.

Strategy

Good luck. There will be the occasional board that will defy the best strategy. I keep playing the same board until I solve it and that tends to teach me a few things that I promptly have to forget for the next board.

In any case, there are some good tips and hints.

The hazard for any board is that you'll get to a situation where a tile is forever blocking its own match. A simple example would be if a red dragon were stacked on top of another red dragon. If these are the last two red dragons left then the board is impossible to win at this point. The key was to use one of the other red dragons to get the top one off. So a general tip is to try not to select matches unless you need access to the tiles that they block or unless you know that they are the last two of their kind left.

For every type of match, there are only four tiles. So if you see that all four tiles are unblocked then you know it's completely safe to get rid of them. Also, if you see three of a particular tile, but one is blocking another then it is always good to get rid of the blocking tile. For example, in the following board the highlighted tiles are safe to remove even though we don't know where the fourth one is. We do know that it can't be blocking the left-over that we can see.

Well, that's about all the stategy I can mention without completely messing you up. Go forth, play, and gain experience... and you'll develop your own style as you go.