A layout puzzle has one rule that matters and several conventions that vary by build. The rule: a tile can be taken when nothing rests on any part of it and at least one long side is clear. The conventions cover matching, shuffling, hints, timers and scoring, and every one of those is a decision made by whoever assembled the board rather than something handed down. This page separates the two.
The free-tile rule, stated precisely
Two conditions, both required at the same moment:
- Nothing on top. No tile from any higher layer may rest on any part of the tile, including a single overlapping corner. Layouts often offset the upper layers deliberately, so one tile above can pin two tiles below.
- One long side open. Either the left edge or the right edge must have no tile touching it. One of the two is enough; both open is no better than one.
The short edges never enter the test. A tile can have tiles pressed against its top and bottom edges and still be perfectly free, which is why vertical columns come apart easily and horizontal rows do not. A row of eight tiles yields exactly two free tiles, one at each end, until you eat inwards.
Both conditions together is the part beginners drop. Being on the highest layer is not enough, and having space either side is not enough. The tile that looks obviously available is usually the one holding up a corner of the layer above.
What is actually blocking your tile
When a board refuses a tile you were sure of, it is one of three situations:
- A tile above overlaps it by a corner. This is the least visible case, because the offset can be small and the blocking tile sits half over the tile beside it too.
- Both long sides are occupied. Common in the middle of the long rows that most turtle layouts use as their base.
- The face you want is on the board but its twin is not free, so the pair is legal and unavailable at the same time. The tile is fine; its partner is buried.
Learning to distinguish the third case from the first two is worth more than any other single skill on these boards, because it changes what you do next. A blocked tile needs the tile above removed; a blocked partner needs a different route entirely.
Matching, and the flowers exception
Two free tiles come off together when they show the same face. All 108 suit tiles exist in four copies, and the honours likewise, so most of the board matches exactly and without ambiguity.
The eight bonus tiles work differently, because each is printed once. Four flowers, four seasons, eight unique pictures. If exact matching were required, none of them could ever be removed, so nearly every layout adopts the convention that any flower matches any other flower and any season matches any other season. A minority of builds group all eight together instead, and a few require exact matches and simply place those tiles in reachable positions. The board tells you which convention it uses the first time you try.
Everything else on the board follows the plain rule: identical faces only. A 3 Bamboo does not match a 3 Circle, and a red dragon does not match a green one, however similar the frame around them looks.
Reading a layout by its layers
The standard turtle is four layers deep, with a long base, narrower middles and a single tile on top. Reading it well means seeing three things at once: which tiles are free right now, which will become free if you take a specific pair, and which tiles are load-bearing for the whole structure. A layout of that kind in the catalogue here is 10 Mahjong.
Practical priorities, in order:
- Take from the highest layer that offers a matching pair. Height blocks more than width, and the top tile of a stack unblocks the one beneath it immediately.
- Open the long base rows from both ends at once, so reachable tiles accumulate from two directions rather than one.
- When all four copies of a face are free simultaneously, clear all four. Two left behind become a liability the moment one gets buried.
- When only two copies remain and both are free, check what each is supporting before taking them purely because you can.
Boards with different silhouettes reward slightly different priorities. A tower stacks the tiles vertically so the free tiles form the outer skin; the boards on the tower page punish stripping one face while ignoring the others. A rotating cube layout changes which tiles are exposed as you turn it, so the free-tile test applies to whatever orientation you are currently looking at. Mahjong 3D is one of the layouts kept on this site.
Why a board dies, and what shuffling really does
A board is dead when tiles remain but no two free tiles match. Two causes, and it is worth knowing which one you are looking at.
The first is the deal. Some builds shuffle tiles into the layout without verifying that a solution exists, which means a proportion of boards were never winnable. Builds that guarantee solvability exist and usually say so.
The second is order of play, and it is the one you can do something about. Taking a pair that was propping open the route to its own partners is how most deadlocks are manufactured. The purest example is the last two copies of a face stacked one directly on the other: the lower tile is permanently pinned by the upper one, and the upper one has no partner left anywhere. The anatomy of a deadlocked board works through the common shapes this takes.
A shuffle redistributes the tiles that are still standing into the positions that are still standing. It does not add tiles or change the layout, and it does not guarantee the new arrangement is solvable either. A hint highlights one legal pair, generally the first one found rather than the best one available, which is why following hints blindly is a decent way to bury yourself. Most builds charge score or time for both.
Timers, scores and the things that vary
Nothing in the preceding sections depends on which board you play. Everything in this one does. Some layouts run a countdown and end the board when it expires; others have no clock at all. Some award points per pair with a bonus for consecutive quick matches; others simply record completion time. Hint counts range from unlimited to none, and undo may or may not exist.
Treat all of that as house furniture rather than rules. When you open an unfamiliar board, the two things worth checking before you start are whether a timer is running and whether shuffles are limited, because both change how freely you can spend your early pairs. The complete guide covers where these layouts came from and how they relate to the four-player game, and the beginner page is the one-screen version if someone is watching over your shoulder. There are turtle, pyramid, seasonal and flat-grid shapes on the solitaire boards page, and Mahjong Titan is a reasonable place to test the priorities above on a standard four-layer build. The site’s own example of it is Mahjong Gardens.
