Guide

Mahjong Solitaire Layouts

A layout is the shape the tiles are stacked into. It is not just decoration: the arrangement decides how many tiles are free at once and how easily you can strand yourself, which is what really sets a board's difficulty.

Why the shape matters

A flat, open layout leaves lots of tiles playable, so you always have choices - forgiving. A tall, tightly-stacked layout buries most tiles, so only a few are free at any moment and a careless match can trap the rest. The famous Turtle is the classic middle ground; everything else is a variation on how open or how buried the tiles are.

Four sizes, not one

A full 144-tile board is a 10-25 minute sitting. Some days you have that, and some days you have four minutes, so every layout here comes in one of four sizes - 36, 72, 108 or 144 tiles - and there is a Daily at each of them. The smaller boards are not training wheels: they are the same game at a length that fits a coffee break, and on a phone they are the only sizes with tiles big enough to tap comfortably.

Within each size the boards are ordered gently first. We measure that rather than guess it: a bot plays every layout thousands of times and we record how often it clears the board. A lower rate does not mean the board takes more skill - it means the board is easier to strand, which is a different thing and the one worth warning you about.