Your first game of Mahjong

Set up

This is Mahjong solitaire, played alone. The tiles are stacked in layers in a pattern on the table. The classic pattern is the Turtle, with 144 tiles. The tiles are Dots, Bamboo and Characters numbered 1 to 9, four Winds, three Dragons, and the Flowers and Seasons. A full set has four of each tile except the Flowers and Seasons, which come one of each.

Your first turn

First find the free tiles. A tile is free when nothing is on top of it and its left side or its right side is open. Blocked tiles can wait.

Then find two free tiles that match and take them away as a pair. Most tiles match only an identical tile. Any flower matches any other flower, and any season matches any other season. Take your time. The first pair you see is not always the best one.

How a game ends

You win when the board is empty. If no two free tiles match, you are stuck. Take back some moves and choose a different pair, or shuffle the tiles that are left into a board that can still be cleared. Every board in our game can be cleared.

A short example

The tile at the left end of a long row is free, and so is a tile at the right end of the row above it. Both are the Bamboo 4, so you take them as a pair. The tile next to the one you took from the left end now has its left side open, so it is free too, if nothing sits on top of it. Each pair you take can free more tiles. Matches that free the most tiles are the ones to look for.