Play Mahjong

A short history of mahjong solitaire

Mahjong solitaire looks old, and in one way it is: the tiles come from mahjong, a four-player game that took shape in China in the second half of the 1800s. The one-player matching puzzle you play here, though, is a much younger idea. It grew up on computers.

The tiles

A mahjong set has 144 tiles. There are three suits — dots (circles), bamboo (sticks) and characters — each numbered one to nine, with four copies of every tile. There are also winds and dragons, plus flower and season tiles. In the four-player game, people draw and discard tiles to build winning hands. In the 1920s the game became a craze in the United States, and American mahjong clubs are still going strong today.

From a table game to a puzzle

The solitaire version keeps the tiles but throws away the four-player rules. Instead, the tiles are stacked into a shape — often a turtle or pyramid — and you remove matching pairs whose sides are free. The puzzle is usually traced to a computer game called Mah-Jongg, written by Brodie Lockard for the PLATO education system around 1981.

The idea reached home computers in 1986, when Activision published Shanghai. It was a hit, and for years many people called the game "Shanghai" rather than mahjong solitaire. The classic turtle layout from those early versions is still the one most people picture.

On every Windows PC

Microsoft brought the game to millions of homes as Mahjong Titans, which came with Windows Vista and Windows 7. When later versions of Windows dropped it, many players went looking for a replacement — and today mahjong solitaire is one of the most popular puzzle games on phones and on the web.

Why it lasts

Calm Mahjong keeps that classic feel and adds large tiles, a daily puzzle, and boards that can always be cleared. Play a board now, or read how mahjong solitaire differs from mahjong.