Mahjong Link

Mahjong Link takes the connect format and strips the pressure out of it. Tiles are laid flat, pairs are made by joining two identical faces with a line that runs straight or curves no more than twice, and there is no time limit sitting over the board while you work out which route is legal.

Removing the clock changes what the puzzle is about. In a timed connect game you take the first workable pair you see; here you can afford to ask which removal opens the most useful corridor, because a bad opening costs nothing but a shuffle later. The board becomes a sequencing exercise rather than a scanning drill. The same scanning across an open grid is what the Kitchen grid asks for.

The interface stays deliberately plain — a grid of tiles, a hint and a shuffle, and little else competing for attention. The hint will surface one connectable pair when your eyes have stopped seeing them, and the shuffle redeals the survivors when the layout has genuinely closed itself off. The comparison of the two boards covers where those rules come from.

Because there is nothing to rush, full screen is less about reaction speed and more about seeing a whole route at once: with the grid enlarged you can follow a line from one corner of the board to the other without losing track of where it bends. Mahjong Link also runs on mobile and tablet, where the untimed pace suits tapping through a long layout on a small screen.

The board is finished when every tile has been paired off, and the only thing standing between you and that state is whether the pairs you take early leave the late ones reachable. The corridor habit carries straight over to the Happy Easter Links board.

1. Pick out two tiles carrying the same face anywhere on the flat layout.
2. Check the route between them is straight or curves no more than twice and stays clear of the tiles still standing.
3. Click each tile in turn to take the pair off the board.
4. Keep going until the whole layout is empty, using the hint if you stop spotting connections and the shuffle if none are left.

• Think in corridors — every pair you remove in Mahjong Link becomes a route for a later line, so remove with that in mind.
• Clear the outside first — edge tiles are already reachable, and taking them opens the perimeter for longer connections.
• Use the untimed board — there is no clock, so trace the route fully before you click rather than guessing at the bends.
• Hold the shuffle back — it rearranges the survivors, which also scrambles the corridor plan you were working to.
• Switch to full screen — a long two-curve link is much easier to follow when the grid fills the display.