Mahjong Titans

The hardest thing about tile solitaire is not strategy. It is eyesight. Mahjong Titans puts 144 densely printed faces on one screen, and a large share of the mistakes new players make are not tactical errors — they are two tiles that look the same at a glance and are not. Learning to read the set is the actual skill, and once the symbols resolve into categories the board stops feeling like wallpaper and starts feeling like a puzzle.

Learning the 144 Tiles

A complete set breaks into four groups, and each group behaves slightly differently on screen.

The three suits account for most of the board. Circles (also called dots) run from one to nine and are printed as clusters of small rings. Bamboo runs one to nine as sticks, except the one, which is traditionally drawn as a bird rather than a single stick — that one catches everybody out. Characters run one to nine as Chinese numerals above a common lower glyph, and they are the group people misread most, because the difference between a six and an eight is a few strokes at thumbnail size. Every suit tile exists four times.

The winds are East, South, West and North, four copies each, marked with a single large character. The dragons are red, green and white, and the white dragon is often drawn as an empty frame or a blank tile, which surprises players who assume they have found a printing error.

Flowers and seasons are the exception to everything else. There are four of each, all with different artwork, and they match within their group rather than requiring identical faces. Any flower pairs with any flower. Knowing that is worth several minutes a game, because those eight tiles are the ones people skip over assuming they have no partner.

Making the Board Easier on Your Eyes

Small adjustments make a large difference on a densely stacked layout:

• Zoom the page one step. The tile art is drawn at a fixed size, and a single browser zoom increment usually pushes the numeral strokes into legibility without pushing the board off screen.
• Sort by group, not by number. Instead of hunting for "the six of characters", scan for character tiles first and only then read the numerals. Filtering by category halves the work.
• Use the tile shape. Free tiles cast a visible edge on their open side. Training yourself to notice which tiles have an exposed left or right flank is faster than checking each one individually.
• Take breaks on long boards. A full 144-tile arrangement takes a while, and misreads climb sharply once your eyes tire. There is no timer forcing you onwards.

Controls

The Name It Borrows

Mahjong Titans is best known as the solitaire game Microsoft bundled with Windows Vista and Windows 7, which is where a whole generation of office workers first met the format. This browser version takes the name and the presentation rather than the Microsoft code, and it plays the same way: pick two matching free tiles, clear the arrangement, done. The selection rule is the standard one — nothing stacked above, and at least one long side clear so the tile could slide out sideways.

Because the arrangement is stacked in layers, the geometry matters as much as the matching. Tiles capping the highest point block the most, tiles on the protruding side rows block almost nothing, and the difference between an easy finish and a stranded board is usually whether you spent your early moves opening height or nibbling at the edges.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does one bamboo tile have a bird on it? That is the one of bamboo. Traditional sets draw it as a bird instead of a single stick, and it still pairs only with the other three copies of itself.

Is the blank-looking tile a bug? No, that is the white dragon. Depending on the tile set it appears as a plain face or an empty rectangular frame, and there are four of them.

Do flower tiles need an exact match? No. The four flowers pair with each other and the four seasons pair with each other, even though each of the eight has different artwork.

What are the three suits called? Circles, bamboo and characters, each numbered one to nine with four copies of every number.

How can I make the tile faces easier to read? Zoom your browser in one step and identify tiles by suit before reading their number. Most misreads happen between numerals within the character suit.