Tea Mahjong

Tea Mahjong keeps the classic solitaire stack and adds a tea-house setting rather than a rules change. The set is orthodox, the layering is orthodox, and what you are really being asked is whether you can clear it before the timer stops you.

Every level is timed, which puts the emphasis on reading a board quickly rather than exhaustively. The habit that pays is scanning for pairs where both copies are already free, and taking those before hunting for the buried ones. Mahjong Card Solitaire lays the same tiles out in another silhouette.

A hint and a shuffle are there for the moments when the stack offers nothing. Neither is free in practice: the hint eats seconds you may need at the end of the level, and the shuffle hands you a board you then have to read again from scratch. The same heading covers the Kris Remastered grid as well.

The HTML5 build works on a phone, a tablet or a desktop and takes a mouse or a tap. Full screen is the sensible way to play a timed stack, since every second spent locating a tile is a second not spent clearing one. The same free-tile rule governs Garden Tales Mahjong 2.

1. Look over the stack before making the first match.
2. Select two identical tiles that are free to take.
3. Remove pairs steadily, working down through the layers.
4. Empty the tea-house stack before its level timer expires.
5. Use a hint or a shuffle if the stack stops offering pairs.

• Take the free pairs first — in Tea Mahjong the tiles already exposed are the cheapest moves on the clock.
• Peel the top layers — every tile removed from above puts two more into play.
• Scan, do not stare — a timed stack rewards a quick sweep over slow inspection of one corner.
• Treat the shuffle as a cost — a rearranged stack has to be read again from nothing.
• Play in full screen — locating a tile takes longer in a small frame, and the timer does not adjust for it.