Playing Mahjong Solitaire

In essence, Mahjong solitaires are very much like other matching games — the main difference is you can get blocked two ways, either by being closed in on both sides (left / right), or from having another tile fully or partly on top of the one you're interested in.

SoliLuxe can construct Mahjong Solitaire puzzles in two different ways, and you select which one to use in the Settings tab.

• The standard method guarantees that the puzzles can be solved, although it may take many tries to do so.

• The second method is to create the puzzles completely at random, just as with any ordinary "matching type" Solitaire. There is no guarantee such a randomly generated puzzle is solvable, although some layouts are decidedly more likely to be solvable than others.

Note that the assessments made in the game descriptions are for the randomly generated games.

As far as cheating goes, the hint function works like normal. You can also use the standard SoliLuxe X-ray function to make any one tile transparent — but you'll have a hard time to get a glimpse of bottom tiles in larger heaps. Finally, the "Undo" also works as normal.

Mahjong solitaire uses asian mahjong tiles in lieu of cards. These are a bit different from the ordinary suits, colours and ranks for standard cards. Here is a run-down of all the tiles — in a complete set, there are 144 in all.

Note: Mahjong games can only use mahjong card sets (or rather, tile sets). Such sets must have a file name beginning with "SD-Mahjong". (The "SD" part of the name does not show up in the Deck preview list in the Options window.) If you switch to a mahjong game without selecting a mahjong tile set, SoliLuxe will automatically select the default "Mahjong" set (filename "SD-Mahjong.png").

Simple suits: Circles, Bamboo, Characters

Each suit has tiles in the ranks 1-9 (1, 2 and 9 shown here), and there are four tiles of each in the set. A tile can only be matched with an identical one.

Honour suits: Dragons and Winds

There are three dragons (Green, Red and White), and four winds (East, North, West and South). As with the suits, there are four of each tile in the set, and a tile can only be matched with an identical one.

Bonus Tiles: Flowers and Seasons

There are four flowers (Crysanthemum, Orchid, Plum and Bamboo) and four seasons (Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn). There are only one of each of these tiles in the set. However, you can match a flower with any other flower, and a season with any other season.

Picture sets

For those of you not inclined to compare Chinese characters, there are also alternative tile sets where you just have to match for example coloured letters or images:

In these sets, there are no "unique" tiles like in the flowers and seasons suits of the standard set. You always match identical tiles.