Mahjong Solitaire (also spelled mahjongg, mah-jong, majong, 麻將) is a classic board game of tile matching. The goal of the game is to match all the tiles from the game board. (There’s also a 4-player Mahjong game which differs from Mahjong Solitaire.)

In Mahjong Solitaire, the tiles are placed on the game boards, next to each other and/or stacked, forming structures such as pyramids, towers, abstract structures, or animal shapes. Every tile has a face/symbol/picture denoting its “identity.” Typically, in traditional Mahjong, these are the bamboos, Chinese characters, dragons, and circle tiles.

Tiles with the same face can be “matched,” and every tile has at least one other tile with the same face. The player must pair tiles to match them.

Match all the tiles and clear the game board to win. However, the game isn’t as simple as it sounds because the player can only move “free” tiles (a tile is free if there’s no tile blocking it left or right side, and there’s no tile sitting on top of it). This means that you may lose the game if you find yourself with a board where all the tiles are blocked.