Mahjong

Mahjong is a relaxed tile-matching puzzle with three ways to clear a board. Uncover a layered layout, slide tiles through empty cells, or connect matching pictures with a line. Every mode has the same goal: remove all the tiles. There is no opponent rushing your turn. The clock records your playing time and stops when the game is paused.

How to play Mahjong

Choose Classic, Slide, or Connect on the opening screen. Open the layout name or level number to see the available boards. Classic offers 57 layouts grouped into easy, medium, and hard difficulties. Slide and Connect each have 60 levels. You can select any board directly, including an earlier one you would like to practise.

You can also choose a tile collection before starting. Traditional circles, bamboo, and characters are joined by flowers, forest animals, sweets, ocean creatures, fruit, gemstones, patterns, and teacups. The rules stay the same. Match the complete design, including the corner seal used by the extra collections.

Press Start a game, select a tile, and then choose its matching partner. The selected tile lights up. If the pair does not satisfy the current mode's rules, the board stays in place and a message explains the problem. Clearing a board opens a result screen showing your time, move count, and whether you used assistance.

Classic: uncover the layers

Every Classic board begins with 144 tiles, or 72 pairs. A tile is free when no tile covers it and at least one of its left and right sides is open. Two matching pictures are not necessarily a playable pair: you may first need to clear a higher layer or open the end of a row.

The settings let you dim blocked tiles, making the available edges easier to see. Look beyond the nearest match. Removing a top tile or freeing a long row often reveals more useful choices than clearing an isolated pair. The order of your moves matters.

Slide: make room to move

In Slide, matching tiles can be removed when they share a row or column with an empty path between them. If a pair is out of alignment, drag a tile in a straight line across empty cells. You cannot pass through another tile or turn a corner during one slide.

A valid pair created by the slide disappears automatically. The first three levels introduce straight matches, moving a tile, and clearing a lane. Later boards grow larger. Keep useful empty cells available: they create room for your next move.

Connect: look around the edges

Connect matching tiles with a clear line that turns no more than twice. The path may travel through empty cells or around the outside of the board. A pair on opposite edges can therefore be easier to remove than a nearby pair trapped in the middle. The remaining tiles do not fall or move after a match.

Hints, undo, and shuffle

Hint highlights a possible pair or shows a tile and destination for a slide. Undo restores the previous move. Shuffle rearranges the remaining designs and provides a verified route to a clear board. If a remaining Classic shape is geometrically blocked, shuffling may also spread the remaining tiles into a flat arrangement.

These helpers do not require a waiting period. Using a hint, undo, or shuffle marks that game as assisted. An unassisted completion is kept in preference to an assisted result for the same board.

Tips

• In Classic, pay attention to upper tiles and the ends of long rows. Opening them creates more choices.
• Before sliding, check the entire row or column rather than only the destination cell.
• In Connect, look for an outside route when the centre is crowded.
• On a small screen, zoom in for clear tiles and pan across the board. The overview button helps you find your bearings.
• Pause when you need a break. The clock resumes when you return to play.

Saves and a shared table

Your own unfinished board, results, and preferences are saved on the device for a guest or to the account for a signed-in player. Continue game returns to the unfinished layout. The status beneath the menu buttons shows whether the latest save has been confirmed.

Invite a friend to the game opens a shared table for accepted friends, with up to eight real participants including the owner. Everyone works on the same board. Visiting a friend's table does not replace your personal saved layout.

Similar games

Mahjong is another way to enjoy traditional tiles. Sudoku offers a different kind of quiet logic puzzle, while Domino lets you play a tile game with a choice of player counts.