Clear the board by matching free tiles. Every deal can be won, with hint, undo and shuffle, a daily deal, a 144-tile pyramid and a 72-tile compact layout.
Mahjong solitaire is a one-player game where you clear the board by removing pairs of matching tiles that are free. A tile is free when nothing lies on top of it and either its left side or its right side has no tile next to it. Tap one free tile, then a second free tile with the same picture, and both disappear. The board is cleared when all the tiles are gone. A set has 144 tiles: three suits of nine (dots, bamboo sticks and characters) with four copies each, which is 108 tiles, plus four copies of each of the four winds (16) and the three dragons (12), plus 4 season tiles and 4 flower tiles. In the full set every ordinary tile has three matching copies, so there is often more than one way to pair them. The four seasons match each other and the four flowers match each other, so any season removes with any season. Covered tiles are dimmed and crossed with fine lines, so a free tile can be told apart without relying on colour.
Many mahjong solitaire games shuffle the tiles at random, and some of those deals cannot be cleared. This page deals the board backwards instead. It starts with an empty board and places one pair at a time on two positions that would both be free at that moment, working from the last pair you will remove back to the first. Played forwards, the same pairs come off in the order they were placed, so a winning order always exists. Three rules keep the construction from getting stuck: a tile is placed only after the tiles under it, each row grows outward from one starting tile, and no empty spot is left with tiles on both sides. The deal is fixed by its number and its layout, so Deal #482913 is the same board for everyone who plays it in the same layout. Solvable does not mean every move wins: with four copies of a tile you can remove the wrong two and block the rest. That is what Undo, Hint and Shuffle are for.
The Classic pyramid has 144 tiles on five layers: 87 on the bottom, then 36, 16, 4 and a single tile on top. The Compact layout has 72 tiles on three layers (48, 20 and 4) with a 34-face set using two copies of each ordinary tile plus 2 seasons and 2 flowers, which makes 36 pairs and a game of a few minutes. Compact is the default on a portrait phone, where the pyramid would make the tiles too narrow to tap, and the board is sized from the space the page has, so tiles grow to fill the screen. Open Options to switch layout, turn on Large symbols (a big letter or number on each tile, such as D3 for three dots, B7 for seven bamboo, C5 for five characters, E for the east wind, R for the red dragon), type a deal number, or open the Daily deal. The daily deal comes from today's date on your device and always uses the Compact layout, so everyone with that date gets the same board.
Hint highlights a pair of free tiles. It searches for a way to finish the board from where you are and shows the first move of that route, or the pair that uncovers the most tiles when the search runs out of its limit. Undo puts back the last pair and has no limit, so you can step back to the start. Shuffle re-deals the tiles that are left onto the same positions using the same backward construction, so the board is solvable again, and it is offered when no free pair matches. Hint and Shuffle count as help: a win with help is not saved as a best time, and a win without help is saved per layout in this browser. The timer starts at your first tap, pauses while the tab is hidden and stops when the board is clear. Keys: Tab moves between free tiles, the arrow keys jump to the nearest free tile, Enter or Space selects, H shows a hint, U undoes, S shuffles and Escape clears a selection.
The tile pictures are drawn for this page as SVG and use no emoji. The characters and winds are text, though: the numbers on character tiles are Chinese numerals with the 萬 character, so how they look depends on the fonts installed on your device, and the Large symbols option adds Latin letters and digits in case a font is missing. The page does not keep a ranking, play sound, share boards by link or judge whether your move was the best one. A game in progress is saved in this browser for each deal, and the last 12 deals are kept.
Yes. Each deal is built backwards from an empty board, one legal pair at a time, so at least one winning order exists at the start of every game, in both the 144-tile and 72-tile layouts. A wrong choice can still block you, so use Undo or Shuffle.
A tile is free when no tile lies on top of it and its left or right side is open. A tile with neighbours on both sides is blocked, even if nothing is on top. Free tiles are bright and covered ones are dimmed with fine lines.
The page tells you when no free pair matches. Press Shuffle to re-deal the remaining tiles so the board can be won again (it counts as help), or press Undo to take back matches one at a time, as many as you like.
Use Compact: 72 tiles, 36 pairs, and tiles about 38 to 40 pixels wide on a 375 to 390-pixel-wide phone. The 144-tile Classic pyramid is wider, so its tiles shrink on a portrait screen and the page warns when they fall under 36 pixels.
The daily deal uses your device's date, such as 2026-10-15, as its seed and always the Compact layout, so everyone with that date plays the same board. Your best time is saved per layout in this browser, only for wins without Hint or Shuffle, and a daily counts once a day.
No. The game runs in your browser and nothing about your board is uploaded. The deal, your moves and your times are kept in this browser's storage. The page counts visits with Google Analytics, never your tiles or moves.