A complete guide to Mahjong solitaire: the goal, the “Turtle” layout, the free-tile rule, removing pairs, controls on muta.pro and tips to avoid driving the pile into a dead end.
Mahjong is a single-player solitaire made of patterned tiles. A multi-tier figure is laid out on the table — the “Turtle” layout of 144 tiles (72 pairs). Your task is to fully clear the pile, removing tiles in matching pairs. You can only remove free tiles, so the key is not just to find matches, but to open up rows in the right order so that you are not left without moves at the end.
The game assembles the “Turtle” figure itself: the tiles are stacked in several layers on top of each other, the upper ones partly covering the lower ones. The set contains the same suits as in classic Mahjong: bamboo, circles and numbers (1–9 each, four copies of each), as well as winds, dragons and the paired seasons. The layout is always generated to be solvable — in theory it can be cleared completely if you act carefully. The left panel shows statistics and records, the right one — progress, buttons and the list of suits.
A tile is free if it is not covered by another tile from above and at the same time its left or right edge is open (there is no neighbour on one of these sides). Only free tiles can be selected; blocked ones are dimmed.
Among the free tiles, look for two with the same design. Tiles of the same suit and value match; the exception is the seasons: the four different seasons are considered to pair with one another.
Select the first free tile — it lights up. Then tap a second identical one: the pair disappears from the board and reveals the tiles that lay beneath it or were pinned at the side.
Every removal changes the picture of free tiles. Remove them so as to open up new moves, not to lock the tiles you need under the upper layers.
If no available pair remains on the board, you reach a dead end. The button “Shuffle” rearranges the remaining tiles so that a move appears again.
If you cannot find a move, the button “Hint” highlights one available pair. The number of hints used is counted in the game statistics.
The tiles are cream-coloured pieces with a suit design. A green frame marks the selected tile, a gold one the hint. Dimmed tiles are blocked.
The game is won when you have removed from the board all 72 pairs and not a single tile remains. Then a victory screen appears with your time and the number of hints. The clock runs from the first move removed, so for a record it makes sense to play fast and without hints. You cannot lose: even in a dead end you can shuffle the board or start a new layout.
Remove tiles from the upper layers first — they reveal several hidden tiles below at once.
Each tile appears four times. If three identical ones are visible, do not rush — the fourth may block the move you need.
Long rows block their neighbours. Open up their ends to gain access to the tiles in the centre.
First look for a pair yourself and use the hint. Save shuffling for a real dead end.
Everything in mahjong solitaire rests on a single rule: a tile is free if nothing covers it from above and at least one side edge — left or right — is open. It sounds simple, but the whole game is built on reading blocking quickly. Learn to see it not from a text description but right on the board: look at a tile and answer instantly whether it has a neighbour on top and whether it is wedged into the row on both sides. Until this test becomes automatic, you will keep clicking blocked tiles and losing tempo — and in a race against the clock, tempo decides everything.
The top row is open — both tiles are free along an edge (gold). The bottom row is packed tight: the central tile is squeezed by neighbours on both sides and blocked (dark).
From here comes a simple reading of the board: the ends of rows are almost always live, the middle of a packed row is dead until you remove one of the ends. The upper layer of the "Turtle" does not open the lower one all at once, but gradually, as edges are freed beneath it. Before you hunt for pairs, scan exactly the borders: where a row breaks off, that is where your moves are.
It helps to keep two categories of tiles in mind. Your live stock — the free and nearly free tiles you can use right now. Your deep reserve — what is hidden beneath the ridge and will only surface a few moves later. A good game is one where the live stock is replenished faster than it is spent: if the number of free tiles dropped after a removal, you have most likely turned in an unfavourable direction and are bringing a dead end closer.
A tile on top covers not one tile below but several at once — in the "Turtle" a single ridge tile holds up to four neighbours beneath it. That is why a pair removed at the top opens up a whole fan of new moves, while a pair removed at the bottom changes almost nothing. Count not "how many pairs do I see" but how many tiles each move will open. Take the mountain apart not "wherever I spotted a pair, I remove it" but deliberately — from top to bottom and from the central ridge out to the edges.
The pair on top (gold) covers two hidden tiles (dark). Remove the top and both lower tiles become available at once.
The central tower blocks the most tiles. As long as its top stands, half the mountain is unreachable — cut it down on purpose, even if "easy" pairs hang around the edges.
Choosing between two pairs, weigh it up: one opens a single tile, the other three? Take the one that reveals more — that way your live stock of moves grows faster than it is spent.
An edge tile is free and will almost certainly stay free to the end. It opens nothing, so it pays to hold it back as a guaranteed move in reserve.
Every design in the set appears four times — two pairs. The most insidious mistake is not the dead end where there are no moves at all, but the hidden dead end: you remove the "wrong two" copies early, and the remaining pair ends up stacked one on top of the other in a shared tower. The upper one covers the lower, you cannot take them together, and there are no other copies left — the tiles are orphaned. Worst of all, such a trap shows up not right away but about ten moves later, when nothing can be fixed anymore.
Hence the golden rule of planning: for each design, keep in mind where all four copies lie. The "Turtle" figure is symmetrical, and identical tiles often mirror each other along the edges — remove the mirrored pairs, leaving the central copies for taking apart the inner layers. That way you will almost never lock away your own last pair.
All four copies of one design: the free pair (gold) — remove it. The other two stand towered one above the other (dark) — take them apart vertically later, or they will be orphaned.
Two identical tiles in one vertical are "tied". Remove a pair from the other, free copies, and take this column apart separately — top to bottom.
Ask not "can I remove this?" but "won't some copy be orphaned afterwards?". If a tied pair is the only one left, the game is lost structurally.
Before you take away a dragon or a wind, make sure its other half will definitely come to you and not be locked under an untouched layer.
Most layouts are lost not through bad luck but through a few typical slips. A layout is always generated solvable — but that only means a correct removal order exists, not that any order will do. Plan a route: after removing a pair you should gain new available moves in return, not lock yourself in. And remember that you cannot truly lose this solitaire: even in a total dead end you can shuffle the board or start over, so the price of a mistake is not defeat but the time lost to a restart.
The profitable move is not the edge singletons but the central pair (gold): a whole row is hidden beneath it (dark), which it will open all at once.