Mah Jongg Solitaire

Agame’s 2016 build is the unfussy end of the genre. A traditional layout, tiles rendered with more polish than the portal era usually managed, a soundtrack that stays in the background, and nothing counting down anywhere on the screen.

The absence of a timer is the design, not an omission. Every decision on the board is about which of two available pairs opens more of the layout, and that decision is only interesting when you are allowed to make it slowly. Take the wrong pair and the board narrows; take it with a clock ticking and you never find out why. Pairs leave the stack the same way in the Christmas board.

Tiles come off under the open rule, uncovered above and free on one side, and the traditional faces mean the circle suit is the one that catches people out, since five dots and six dots look far more similar than they ought to. Another build of that period still running here is the The Key board.

Unlike most of the older layouts kept on this site, it is not an emulated file, so it handles touch as well as a mouse and the soundtrack plays cleanly on a phone or a tablet. A second stacked layout here is the Classic pile.

1. Read the layout before the first click and find which suits are heavily stacked.
2. Take identical pairs that have a clear top and one free side.
3. When two pairs are available, remove the one that uncovers more tiles.
4. Work through the layers until the board is empty.

• Count the dots twice — the circle suit is where nearly every misclick on a traditional set happens.
• Take the pair that opens most — with no clock, this is the only decision that matters.
• Leave an easy match spare — an unspent obvious pair is your way out of a tight endgame.
• Full screen shows the whole layout — the traditional shape is wide and gets cramped in a window.
• Let the soundtrack run — it is paced for a slow board rather than a race.