Mahjong: The Great Wall
How to play Mahjong Great Wall
Mahjong solitaire is a tile-matching puzzle for one player in which you clear a stacked layout of mahjong tiles by removing free tiles in matching pairs.
A flat wall of twelve by nine with nothing raised: every tile in plain sight.
108 tiles, 1 layer
About Mahjong Great Wall
The Great Wall uses 108 tiles, 54 pairs, on a single layer: nine rows of 12. No tile is ever covered, so the only thing that holds a tile is its neighbours in the row, and at the start just 18 are free, the two ends of each row. With less than a full set, some faces may appear only twice or not at all.
It is the one layout where nothing is hidden, but fewer tiles start free than the Turtle's 35. Because every face is in view, you can plan whole sequences: before you take a pair, check that the tiles it exposes at the row ends have partners that are free or soon will be. A tile mid-row is reached only by clearing everything on one side of it.
Strip every free tile at once and do it again, and The Great Wall falls in six waves of 18, one tile from each end of every row each time, since a row of 12 opens only from its ends. The two middle tiles of a row are therefore always the last of that row to go, so a face whose copies sit mid-row needs one side of their rows cleared early.
The goal of Mahjong
Mahjong solitaire is a tile-matching puzzle for one player, not the four-player game. Clear the board by removing its tiles in matching pairs; you win when no tile is left.
How to set up Mahjong
A full set has 144 tiles: bamboo, characters and dots from 1 to 9, four winds and three dragons, four of each, plus four flowers and four seasons. Some layouts use fewer tiles. A new board is dealt at random and may be impossible to clear, unless you turn on Winnable under New game. Even a winnable board can be lost by matching the wrong pairs.
Mahjong rules
Select two free tiles that match and both leave the board. Tiles match when they show the same face, but any flower matches any flower and any season matches any season.
A tile is free when nothing lies on top of it, even partly, and its left or right side is not touching another tile on the same layer. Only the left and right sides count. You can have free tiles highlighted in the settings.
Hint shows a pair to take, chosen to keep the board winnable when a winning line can be found. Undo takes back a match, and Restart deals the same board again. There is no reshuffle: if tiles remain but no free pair matches, you are stuck and can undo, restart or start a new game.
The full Mahjong guide, with strategy tips and common questions