How to Play Mahjong Solitaire: Rules, Free Tiles and Strategy

In Mahjong Solitaire you clear a stacked layout of 144 tiles by removing matching pairs of free tiles. A tile is free when no tile lies on top of it and it has an open side on its left or right. Match two identical free tiles and both disappear. Clear every tile to win.

That's the whole game. The skill is in choosing which pair to take, because taking the wrong one can leave tiles you can never reach. This guide covers the rules, the tiles and the strategy, and you can try each point in Mahjong Solitaire on Poozee.

The layout

The tiles start stacked in a pattern called the Turtle, the classic layout for the game. It has five layers:

So the middle of the Turtle is a tall stack. The four tiles at the very bottom of the center each have four tiles on top of them, and you have to clear all of those before you can reach them.

Which tiles are free

A tile is free when both of these are true:

1. Nothing lies on top of it, not even partly. The top tile of the Turtle overlaps four tiles at once, so all four stay blocked until it's gone.
2. Its left or right side is open. At least one of the spaces directly beside it, in the same row and on the same layer, must be empty. Tiles in the rows above and below don't count.

This is why the long rows matter. In a row of tiles side by side, only the two tiles at the ends are free. A tile in the middle only frees up once every tile on one side of it is gone.

At the start of every game, 35 of the 144 tiles are free. We checked that count, and the layer sizes above, with Poozee's game code.

What matches what

There are four of each ordinary tile, so every kind is cleared in two pairs. The flowers and seasons come one of each, so instead they match anything in their own group.

The mistake to watch for

A common way to make a game impossible to finish: three matching tiles are free, and you can only take two.

Say three 7 of bamboo are free, and the fourth is buried directly under one of them. You have three pairs to choose from:

• Take the two that aren't on the buried tile. Now the last two 7s are stacked on top of each other. The top one can never be matched while it covers the only tile it could match. The game can no longer be won.
• Take the one on top of the buried tile, with either of the others. That uncovers the fourth 7, which then matches the one still free.

We set up this exact position in Poozee's game engine to check it. The engine's search proves that only the second choice can still clear the board, and the Hint button picks it.

The general rule: before you take a pair, find the other two tiles of that kind. If one lies on the other, don't leave them to be matched together.

Strategy for clearing the Turtle

1. Never strand the last two of a kind, as described above.
2. Take the pair that frees the most tiles. On a full Turtle, the single top tile frees the four tiles under it, and the lone tile at the far left end frees the two tiles beside it.
3. When two pairs are equally good, take the higher one. Tiles at the bottom of the five-deep center can't come free until everything above them is gone.
4. Don't dig for height alone. Always taking the highest tiles, whatever they free, cleared fewer games than random play when we tested it.
5. Take all four when you can. When all four tiles of a kind are free, removing both pairs is always safe, though it doesn't change your odds much.
6. Use undo to look ahead. If a choice worries you, try it. You can always take it back.

We measured these rules by having a computer play 3,000 deals with each one. See our Mahjong Solitaire strategy guide for the results.

Pro tip: Turn on Show free tiles in Poozee's game. It dims every tile you can't take yet, so you can scan for pairs much faster.

If you get stuck

When no free tiles match, you have three options on Poozee:

• Undo a few moves and choose a different pair.
• Hint looks for a way to clear the whole board from where you are. If one exists, it shows a pair on that line. If it finds that none is left, it tells you so.
• Shuffle rearranges the remaining tiles on the same spots into a position that can be cleared. The one thing it can't fix is tiles stacked so they can never come free in pairs, such as the last two tiles lying one on top of the other. The game tells you when that happens.

Every new game on Poozee can be won: each deal is built by playing a random game in reverse, so a way to clear it always exists.

Keep playing

Try it now in Mahjong Solitaire. If you enjoy thinking a few moves ahead, FreeCell and our FreeCell strategy guide are a good next step, and Spider Solitaire rewards the same planning with two decks of cards.