Guide
A Short History of Mahjong Solitaire
The puzzle is young, but its tiles are not. Mahjong solitaire is a computer-age invention that dressed itself in tiles with a century of history behind them.
The tiles: 19th-century China
Mahjong the four-player game took shape in China in the 1800s and spread rapidly. In the 1920s it became an international craze, and its tiles - the circles, bamboo, characters, winds, dragons, flowers and seasons - became instantly recognizable around the world.
The puzzle: 1981
Mahjong solitaire is much newer. It is widely credited to Brodie Lockard, who built a tile-matching game called Mah-Jongg on the PLATO computer system around 1981, arranging the tiles into a stacked shape and clearing them in pairs. The idea is sometimes traced to an older arrangement known as “the Turtle”, which is still the layout most people picture.
Shanghai and the boom
The puzzle reached a huge audience when Activision released Shanghai in 1986. Bundled, cloned, and ported endlessly through the 1990s, it became one of the most-played computer games ever - and fixed the format in people's minds: a pile of tiles, remove the free pairs, clear the board.
Today
Mahjong solitaire now lives mostly in the browser, free and instant. The best modern versions add what the early games couldn't guarantee - honestly solvable boards, a shared daily puzzle, and a bit of beauty in the tiles and backgrounds. That is exactly what we set out to build with Mahjong Tide.