Mahjong Solitaire Beginner Tips: Clear the Board Without Wasting Hints (2026)

1. "Free" is the only rule that matters

A tile can be picked only when it is free: nothing covers it from above, and at least one of its left or right sides is open. That is the whole game. Tiles that are not free are dimmed, and clicking them does nothing, so the first habit to build is to scan the dimmed tiles and ask which one is holding the rest of the board shut.

A tile in the middle of a solid row is never free, no matter how obvious its twin is. The pair you can see is often not the pair you can take yet — the removable tiles are always on the edges and on the top layer.

2. Peel the top and the edges, not the middle

Because height and side-openness are the two conditions, a board opens outward from its crown and its rim. Two tiles in the same horizontal row block each other only while both have a neighbour on the relevant side, so clearing the outermost tile of a row can immediately free the one next to it. Work in layers: take the top-most free pair first, and prefer the pair whose removal unlocks the most new tiles.

Two rules of thumb that follow. When two candidate pairs are both available, remove the one that sits higher or further out. And when a pair is available but its twin is buried, resist matching anything that buries it deeper.

3. Hints and shuffles are cheap; running out is not

You get 3 hints and 2 shuffles on every board, and neither costs you a move — a hint only subtracts 50 points, a shuffle 100. Against a board that can dead-end, that is a bargain, and the common beginner mistake is hoarding them and then losing with both still unused.

Use a hint the moment you are down to a handful of free tiles and cannot see a pair; use a shuffle when the free tiles genuinely have no match among them. Treat the shuffle as a rescue, not a reroll: it re-rolls the faces of the tiles still on the board, so it can rescue an unmatched layout, but it cannot unblock a buried tile for you.

4. A random deal can dead-end — plan for it

The board is dealt by pairing the tile faces and then shuffling their positions at random, so unlike a hand-made puzzle a deal is not guaranteed to be solvable start to finish. The game watches for the dead end: when the free tiles stop containing any matching pair it raises the no-moves screen, and if you have a shuffle left you can spend it to keep going. This is exactly why rule 3 above matters — the resource that saves you is the one you did not save for later.

The practical version: keep at least one shuffle unspent until the board is a third empty, and never trade your last shuffle for a small convenience. If you clear a whole board with both shuffles intact, that run was both lucky and well played.

5. Score rewards the pair you remove and the help you did not use

Each removed pair is worth 100 points plus 10 for every hint you still hold and 20 for every shuffle you still hold. That is the interesting part of the scoring: the same pair is worth 100 early and up to 210 late, once unused help is still on the counter. A board finished with 3 hints and 2 shuffles in hand pays the maximum; every hint you spend lowers the value of every remaining pair.

The timer adds a completion bonus as well, but the discipline is the same: clear the board, and clear it without spending help you did not need.

6. Read the whole board before the first pair

Four copies of a face can appear on one level, so "its twin" is never quite as simple as it looks: you may be choosing which two of three or four visible copies to remove. Take five seconds before your first click and find the layer structure — the crown, the rim, the buried middle — and which faces are concentrated where. The pair that looks easiest at the start often belongs to the region you will need most later.

Then play the opening in the order most likely to open the board fastest: top-most and outermost pairs first, and chains of free tiles before isolated ones. The board tends to open in a cascade once the first few locks come off, and the cascade is easier to steer before the middle is bare.

FAQ

How do you play mahjong solitaire?

Pick two identical free tiles to remove them as a pair. A tile is free when no tile sits on top of it and at least one of its left or right sides is open. Clear all the tiles to finish the level; the next level's board is larger and taller.

Is every board solvable?

No, and that is by design in this build. The faces are paired and then their positions are shuffled at random, so a deal can run out of matching free tiles. When that happens the game shows the no-moves screen; if you still have a shuffle you can spend it and continue.

What do the hints and the shuffle do?

A hint highlights a matching pair that is currently free, costs 50 points and does not cost a move. A shuffle re-rolls the faces of the tiles still on the board, costs 100 points, and also costs no move. You get 3 hints and 2 shuffles per board.

Is it free, and does it work offline?

Yes, it is free and runs entirely in your browser with no download, no account and no ads inside the game. The single page makes no outside requests at all once it has loaded.

Does it save my progress?

Yes. The game auto-saves the board you are on and keeps a per-level leaderboard on your own device, so closing the tab does not throw a run away — reopen the page and you can continue where you left off.

Does it work on mobile?

Yes. The board scales to the screen with no sideways scroll at a 390px viewport, and a tap goes through the same click code path as a desktop click. On a narrow phone the whole board shrinks to fit, so the tiles get small — the hint button is the fastest way to keep a match in view.

Where can I play it?

Right on this site's mahjong-solitaire page. It is built on the MIT-licensed single-file engine by Valentyn Kolesnikov (commit e7a6f402); no artwork is shipped, because the tile faces are emoji characters drawn by your own device, and the license and attribution are listed under the game.