Mahjong solitaire, also known as Shanghai solitaire, electronic or computerized mahjong, MahJong solitaire, solitaire Mahjong and, erroneously, as mahjong, is a solitaire matching game that uses a set of Mahjong tiles rather than cards. The 144 tiles are arranged in a special four-layer grid with their faces upwards.

A tile that can be moved left or right without disturbing other tiles is said to be exposed. Exposed pairs of identical tiles (Flower tiles in the same group being considered identical) are removed from the grid one at a time, gradually exposing the lower layers to play. The aim of the game is to clear the grid by pairing up all the tiles. The game is finished when either the grid is empty, or there are no exposed pairs remaining.

While Shanghai solitaire can be played using genuine tiles and a special wooden frame for set-up, it is usually played in an electronic form as a computer game. This removes the tedium of the set-up process and the temptation to cheat. Some electronic Mahjong solitaire games offer extra options, such as the ability to change the tile set and patterns from the traditional tiles to flowers, jewels or some other item that may be easier to match up at a glance, to play a series of different layouts with increasing levels of difficulty (usually given Chinese names such as 'the ox' or 'the snake'), or "wildcard tiles" and other tiles that have special functions. These games also have an optional time limit, and offer hints/cheat options such as the ability to have a match found for you, or to backtrack and undo already made moves. Additionally, most implementations of the game arrange the tiles in such a way that the game is solvable in at least one way.

Mahjong solitaire can be played either solo, or with a partner in which case the aim is either to accumulate the most pairs, or to be the last one to match a pair.

History

Shanghai was released in 1986 by Activision (USA, California) as a computer game for the Macintosh. Brodie Lockard had the idea and was the programmer, Brad Fregger was the producer. The game became very successful and around 10 million copies were sold.

The name "Shanghai" was trademarked by Activision. As the game is based on mahjong tiles some confusion arose with the 4 player mahjong game on the search for a new name. Although mahjong solitaire is generally accepted, other names include The Turtle and Shanghai Solitaire. Other known brandnames of mahjong solitaire include Taipei, Kyodai, and Moraff's.

"Shanghai" may be based on a few hundered years old Chinese game 'The Turtle'. Brad Fregger writes in his book "Lucky that way" that Brodie Lockard the original programmer said so. (However there was a long biased discussion about the origin.) As written by some a computer based (unix) mahjong solitaire game shall have existed already in 1981.

External link

• Mahjong Solitaire history, rules, and links to over 200 computer implementations of Mahjongg solitaire.
• Solitaire Mahjongg Fast and online playable Mahjongg game, compatible with any web browser
• Mahjong Solitaire Online Free Mahjong Solitaire games to play online.
• logic Mahjong shareware Mahjong Solitaire game, with many layouts, with random solveable puzzles.