Halloween Mahjong

WillingGames lays this Halloween board out as a connecting layout: two matching tiles are joined, both disappear, and the board is done when nothing is left to join. The short definition answers the questions this board raises.

There is no fixed finishing line here. Levels keep arriving for as long as you keep clearing them, so the number that matters is the highest one you reached before a board beat you. Two buttons sit beside the layout for the moments it does. Hint points out a pair you have missed, and Shuffle rearranges what remains when the surviving pieces can no longer legally reach one another. Both are worth treating as scarce even when the game is generous with them, since the boards that need them turn up late rather than early. Also under this heading: the Monster layout.

The layout is a wide one, with pumpkins, ghosts and sweets on the faces, and it answers to a tap as readily as a click. The Connect Majong Class board sits one row away in the same list.

1. Study the Halloween layout and pick out two tiles carrying the same picture.
2. Click one and then the other to join them and take both away.
3. Press Hint when nothing obvious is left, or Shuffle when the survivors cannot reach one another.
4. Empty the board to move on, and keep going for as high a level as you can manage.

• Clear the outside in — pieces on the rim of the Halloween board have open routes, and taking them frees the crowded middle.
• Leave the duplicates — where four of one picture are showing, the pair you take first decides whether the other two stay reachable.
• Shuffle late — a rearrangement is more valuable on a board with twelve tiles left than on one still half full.
• Track your best level — since the sequence never ends, the level you reached is the only real measure of a run.