How to play Mahjong Solitaire

Mahjong solitaire is a matching game played with the tiles of the old Chinese game of mahjong. The tiles are piled up in a shape - a tower, a ring, a pair of letters, a fortress several layers high - and you take them away two at a time. Any two identical tiles can be removed together, as long as both of them are free. Clear the whole board and you win.

Finding a pair is easy. The puzzle is choosing the right one. Most faces appear four times, the tiles you need are often buried under others, and taking the wrong two can leave the last pair of a face locked on top of each other. Every deal here can be cleared, so when a board gets stuck the cure is always a better order.

How to play on skill.games

When you open the game, the settings popup appears. Under BOARD you see a small picture of every board: scroll the grid, tap the one you want (it gets a blue outline) and press PLAY. The board you chose is remembered for next time.

• The board fills most of the screen. Free tiles are bright ivory; tiles you can't take yet are shaded a dull green-grey, so you can tell at a glance which ones are in play.
• Matching: tap a free tile and it turns gold. Then tap a free tile with the same face: the two fly apart, clap together and disappear with a burst of sparks and the points they scored.
• Changing your mind: tap the gold tile again to let it go. Tap a free tile that doesn't match and the first one shakes, and the new tile becomes your choice.
• Covered tiles: tapping a tile that isn't free just makes it shake.
• Undo: the round arrow button under the board (beside it on a phone held sideways) takes back your last move. Undo is free and unlimited, all the way back to the start of the deal.
• Shuffle: the button with two crossing arrows gathers the remaining tiles into the middle and deals them back out in a new arrangement. It is free, it can be used at any time, and the new arrangement can always be cleared. A shuffle can be undone like any other move.

The top line shows your score, the time and the number of tiles left. The menu button in the top-left corner pauses the game, starts a new deal or switches the sound on or off. The game is saved after every move, so if you close the page you can press CONTINUE and carry on with the same board and the same undo history.

When the board is empty, the results screen shows your score, time, number of shuffles and the board, plus your statistics: wins, losses, win rate and streaks. The green NEXT LEVEL button takes you straight on to the next board in the grid.

Rules

The tiles. The set has three suits - dots (circles), bamboo (sticks) and characters (Chinese numerals) - each numbered 1 to 9, plus the four winds (east, south, west, north) and the three dragons (red, green and white). Those 34 faces match only themselves. There are also four flowers and four seasons: any flower matches any other flower, and any season matches any other season.

How many of each. A full board of 144 tiles has every suit, wind and dragon tile four times, and each flower and season once. Smaller boards use fewer faces, two or four of each, and only add the flowers and seasons when there is room for all of them.

Free tiles. A tile is free when two things are true: no tile lies on top of it, even partly, and at least one of its long sides - the left or the right - is open, with no tile on the same layer directly beside it. A tile in the middle of a row can't be taken until a neighbour on one side has gone. Tiles above or below it on the same layer don't block it.

Removing tiles. Two free tiles with matching faces are removed together. A tile can never be paired while another tile is covering it, so the bottom tile of a stack has to wait for the ones above it.

The deal. Every deal can be cleared. The board is filled backwards: the game repeatedly picks two tiles that would be free and gives them a matching pair of faces, so one winning order always exists. The same method is used for a shuffle.

No more pairs. If none of the free tiles match, the game tells you at the top of the screen and the shuffle button glows. You can shuffle, or undo a few moves and try a different order. A deal you leave unfinished - by starting a new game from the menu - counts as a loss in your statistics.

Scoring. Each pair scores 240 points, plus 40 for every pair you have made in a row since your last mistake, up to 600 a pair. A mistake is a tap on a covered tile or on a free tile that doesn't match your choice; it starts the run again. Undo takes a pair's points back, and puts your run back where it was. The clock starts with your first tap.

Strategy tips

• Free the long rows first. A row of tiles opens one tile at a time from each end, so the longest rows on the board take the most moves to clear. Start nibbling them early.
• Take tiles off the tall stacks. A tile on top of a pile is holding down everything beneath it. When you have a choice of pairs, prefer the one that uncovers a tile or opens a side.
• Count the faces. If all four of a face are free, take them as two pairs. If only three are free, think before you pair two of them: the fourth may be stuck under the one you leave behind.
• Mind the twins. The classic trap is two identical tiles where one lies on top of the other, or both sit in the same row with nothing between them. They can only be cleared by their partners elsewhere on the board, so make sure those stay available.
• Don't rush the flowers and seasons. They match more freely than the rest, which makes them handy for getting out of a tight spot later.
• Use undo to explore. Undo is free and unlimited. If a line of play leads to "no pairs left", step back a few moves and try something else before reaching for the shuffle.

Boards

There are no difficulty settings. The variety is in the boards - 143 of them, from quick 42-tile shapes to full 144-tile layouts stacked up to six layers high. Every board gets a fresh deal each time you play it, and every deal can be cleared.

Classic shapes. The grid opens with the traditional mahjong solitaire layouts, drawn for this site: the Turtle - the most famous of all, 144 tiles in a stepped shell with a head and a tail - the Fortress with its corner towers and central keep, the winding Dragon, the stepped Pyramid, the Spider, the Crab with its raised claws, the Cat, the Bridge, the Butterfly, the Cross, the Ziggurat, the Pinwheel and the Arena. The Turtle is the toughest of them: its long rows and tall shell take careful planning.

Our own designs. Next come 30 boards made just for skill.games: a heart, a star, a diamond, a crescent moon, a sun, a pine tree, a house, an anchor, a fish, an owl, a mushroom, a teapot, a crown, a key, a bell, a sailboat, a flower, a snowflake, an apple, an hourglass, twin rings, a checkerboard, a ladder, a frog, a duck, a rocket, a window, a spiral, a leaf and a gem. Most are mid-sized and good for a quick game.

100 levels. After them come 100 numbered levels with between 50 and 144 tiles each, in all sorts of shapes - letters, rings, towers, columns and blocks.

Small flat boards with many open ends are quick and gentle; tall, crowded boards with long rows need more planning. A new player starts on the Fortress. You can start anywhere from the grid, and after each win NEXT LEVEL moves you on to the next board, back to the Turtle after Level 100. Your statistics are kept for the game as a whole, across every board.