Mahjong Turtle

The turtle is the formation everybody pictures when tiles are mentioned: a broad flat body, a raised shell in the middle, a head at one end and four legs pushed out to the sides. This build does that shape and little else, which is exactly its appeal.

Pairs come off under the standard rule, a tile must be uncovered from above and free on one side, and the shape dictates the difficulty. The legs and the head unlock quickly; the stacked shell is where a board goes wrong, because the four tiles on its crown pin everything underneath them. For one more pile of the same kind, see Mahjongg Game.

There is no clock at all. Hints will point at a legal pair, and a shuffle will rearrange what is left when the shell has genuinely locked, so a board is rarely a dead loss. Deluxe Plus lays the same tiles out in another silhouette.

The Flash original is emulated here rather than run natively, and the shuffle is where you notice: tiles can snap into their new places instead of sliding, sound occasionally arrives out of order, and full screen has to be the browser’s rather than the game’s own. Freeing the lower rows early matters in the Jong pile as well.

1. Clear the head and the four legs first, since those tiles are already free.
2. Take identical pairs that are uncovered above and open on the left or right.
3. Work down the shell in layers rather than digging one hole through it.
4. Shuffle when no legal pair is left, and use a hint if you suspect you have missed one.

• The crown pins the board — the four tiles on top of the shell block more than anything else in the turtle.
• Symmetry cuts both ways — the legs mirror each other, so their pairs are easy and worth spending late.
• Shuffle before you are desperate — a rearranged shell with tiles still on the legs gives more to work with.
• Hints are for blindness, not strategy — they show a legal pair, not the right one.
• Full screen widens the shell — the middle stack is where misreads happen at small sizes.