Play Mahjong Solitaire Free Online

How This Mahjong Board Works

Take apart a layered board of 144 tiles two at a time by matching free tiles: nothing on top, and the left or right side open. Identical tiles match, and any Flower pairs with any Flower, any Season with any Season. This version uses a five-layer stepped pyramid rather than the turtle, and every deal is built from a known solution, so it can always be cleared. If no free pairs remain, Shuffle rearranges the faces of the tiles left on the board, as often as you like. Undo, Hint and a timer sit in the toolbar. The tile set, the traps and the strategy are covered in How to Play Mahjong Solitaire: Rules, Tiles & Winning Strategy.

Strategy Tips for Mahjong Solitaire

• Look before you match. When three or four of a tile are showing, pick the pair that frees the most buried tiles rather than the nearest one.
• Free the blockers first. Tiles capping tall stacks or locking a whole row are the ones worth prioritizing.
• Count Flowers and Seasons as one face each. Any Flower pairs with any other Flower, so the four Flowers behave like four copies of an ordinary tile, and the same goes for Seasons. Pair them the way you would any other set of four.
• Work the edges and top. Clearing from the outside in exposes the interior tiles that tend to trap you late in a board.
• Don't blindly clear every visible pair. Removing a pair too early can bury its partners' partners — think a move ahead.
• Use Shuffle as a rescue, not a crutch. Exhaust your genuine options first; a good look often reveals a match you missed.

The classic way to lose a solvable board is to strand two matching tiles on top of each other. Suppose four Red Dragons remain: two free at the edge and two stacked in the same spot on different layers. If you clear the two free ones together, the stacked pair can never both be free at once, because the top tile covers the bottom one, and the board is dead. Instead, pair the top stacked tile with one of the free Red Dragons as soon as it opens up, and save the other free one for the tile underneath.

Two smaller mistakes: working only on the base layer while the upper layers stay full, which leaves the tall center stacks for last when you have the fewest options, and reaching for Shuffle before checking the top layers for a pair you missed. Shuffle deals the remaining faces at random, so it can create a new dead end as easily as it fixes one. Because every deal here starts solvable, a dead end before you have shuffled means an earlier choice went wrong; undo a few matches and try another pairing first. Undo works backward one match at a time, so keep going until the stranded tiles have a partner they can reach.

Want the same tiles at a faster pace? Try the slot-bar spin of Tile Mahjong, or switch to cards with TriPeaks Solitaire — all free, no download.