Silkroad Mahjong

The Silk Road gives this board its name and its decoration; the rules underneath it are the plain ones. Identical faces pair off, and the layout is beaten only when the final pair leaves the table.

A tile is available when nothing sits on top of it and either its left or its right side is clear. One side is enough, and that single clause is the whole difference between a stack you can unpick and one that has locked itself. Pairs leave the stack the same way in the Animal pile.

Nothing counts down. Silkroad Mahjong sets no limit on a board, which changes the sensible order of play: read the whole arrangement first, find the faces that appear four times, then decide which two of them to take before touching either. The The Key board comes from the same generation of releases.

What runs on this page is a Flash file from 2017, late in that format’s life, carried now by the Ruffle emulator. The seams are small ones. The click that clears a pair can sound after the tiles have already gone, the title screen occasionally draws before the tile art has caught up with it, and full screen belongs to your browser rather than to the game. The Candy pile piles the tiles into a different silhouette.

1. Let the layout finish stacking, then look across the whole of it before the first click.
2. Find a tile with an empty left or right edge and nothing covering it.
3. Click it, then click its identical partner to take both off the table.
4. Work down through the layers until no tile is left, which is how the board is won.

• Count the fours — most faces appear four times, and taking the wrong two can strand the other pair under a stack.
• Peel the top layer — a piece removed from above usually frees two more beneath it.
• No clock, so plan — with nothing timing the board, a slow read pays better than fast clicking.
• Turn on full screen — the Silk Road tile art is finely drawn and its smaller faces blur badly in a window.
• Leave the edges alone early — outer tiles stay reachable, so they are your reserve for when the middle jams.