Mahjong Solitaire is a single-player tile-matching puzzle. You take a pile of tiles stacked into a layered pattern and dismantle it by removing matching pairs, one pair at a time, until nothing is left. It goes by several names — Mahjong Tiles, Shanghai, Taipei, or just "Mahjong" on a phone or computer — but it is always the same calm, methodical solo game. If you'd rather learn by doing, you can play a board right now and refer back here as questions come up.
Mahjong Solitaire is not the four-player game Mahjong
This is the single most common point of confusion, so it's worth stating plainly. Traditional Mahjong is a social game for four players, built around drawing and discarding tiles to complete a scoring hand — closer in spirit to rummy or gin. Mahjong Solitaire borrows the same beautiful set of 144 tiles, but that's where the resemblance ends: there are no opponents, no hands, no discards and no draws. The goal and the rules are entirely different. Here you simply find pairs and clear the table.
The tiles
A full set has 144 tiles, drawn from a few families:
- Three suits — circles (dots), bamboo, and characters — each numbered 1 through 9, with four copies of every number.
- Honor tiles — the four winds and the three dragons — again with four copies each.
- Bonus tiles — four flowers and four seasons.
For matching, most tiles need an exact identical twin: a circle 5 pairs only with another circle 5, the east wind only with another east wind, and so on. The bonus tiles are the one exception — any flower matches any other flower, and any season matches any other season. That small rule is what lets the bonus tiles come off even though no two of them are truly identical.
The layout
The tiles aren't laid flat in a grid. They're stacked into a multi-layer 3D pattern, with upper tiles resting partly on top of the ones below. The classic shape is the five-layer Turtle (sometimes called the Dragon), but it's only one of several formations — CardHearth also deals a quick Cross, a pointed Diamond, a stepped Ziggurat, a twin-towered Bridge, a winged Butterfly, a walled Fortress, and a moated Arena. The layout is what gives the game its puzzle: tiles bury one another, so the order you remove them in matters.
The objective
The goal is simple to state: remove every tile. You do that by selecting two matching free tiles to take them off the board, then repeating until the whole layout is clear. With 144 tiles that's 72 pairs to find. Clear them all and you've won.
What makes a tile "free"
You can't match just any two tiles — only ones that are currently free. A tile is free when both of these are true:
- Nothing rests on top of it — no tile from a higher layer covers it.
- At least one long side is open — its left edge or its right edge has no tile touching it.
A tile that's buried, or hemmed in by neighbours on both the left and right, is locked. As you clear pairs, locked tiles become free, which is what keeps the puzzle moving.
How you win — and how you get stuck
You win by clearing every tile from the board. You can also get stuck: if you reach a point where no two free tiles match, there are no legal moves left and the layout can't be finished from that position. Importantly, this isn't always bad luck. Every CardHearth deal is built to be solvable — deals are assembled by placing pairs in reverse play order, which guarantees at least one path to a clear board. But a wrong removal order can still strand you (for instance, if two identical tiles end up stacked directly on top of each other). That's exactly what undo is for: step back a few pairs, choose differently, and the winning path is always there. The hint button will surface a matching free pair whenever one exists.
Frequently asked questions
Is Mahjong Solitaire the same as Mahjong?
No. Mahjong is a four-player game played with hands, draws and discards, scored a bit like rummy. Mahjong Solitaire is a single-player puzzle: you simply remove matching pairs of tiles from a fixed layout until the board is clear. The two games share the same 144 tiles, but the goals and rules are entirely different.
When is a tile playable?
A tile is "free" (selectable) when two things are true at once: nothing rests on top of it, and at least one of its long sides — left or right — is open. If a tile is buried under another tile, or boxed in on both the left and right, it is locked until you clear the tiles around it.
Do flowers and seasons match each other?
Within their own group, yes. Any flower matches any other flower, and any season matches any other season — those are the only "mixed" matches in the game. Every other tile (the suits, winds and dragons) must be paired with an exact identical twin.
Keep going
Now that the rules make sense, the best next step is a board: play Mahjong Solitaire and try the principles out. When you want to clear deals faster, our Mahjong Solitaire strategy guide covers the habits that matter, and are solitaire games winnable? explains why "solvable" doesn't mean "easy." For everything else, the guides hub covers the whole CardHearth library.