Solitaire Mahjongg

Mahjongg

Solitaire Mahjongg, also called Taipei, Taipeh or Shanghai, is the web adaptation of an old Chinese board game. The objective is to remove all 144 tiles from the board; for each pair of tiles removed you will get two points.

Options:

• New: sets up a new game.
• Layout: sets up a new game using a different layout.
• Restart: restarts the current game.
• Undo: withdraws your moves one by one.
• Moves: displays the number of currently possible moves.
• Hints: shows currently possible moves one by one.

The rules are simple:

Starting from the sides, or from the central tile at the top of the pile, remove tiles by clicking on two equal symbols. If the tiles are identical, they will disappear, and your score will rise.

Removeable tiles always must be free on their left or right side. If a tile sits between two tiles on the same level, it cannot be selected.

Note: The four tiles showing season symbols (above, left) match even if they are different; the four flower tiles (above, right) match respectively.

About Solitaire Mahjongg

In mathematical terms, Solitaire Mahjongg is easily described. There are 144!/(4!)³⁶ different games, the probability that you will encounter the same game twice is 1/1.1394912*10²⁰⁰.
As to the classic layout, the number of games that actually can be won cannot be calculated, yet experts estimate that good players win every third up to every second game. The other game layouts are even more challenging.

This web version of Solitaire Mahjongg consists of two files coded in DHTML/CSS and javascript. In addition, images are used for the tiles, buttons and game background. To play the game no plugins are needed. There are no special system requirements, except for a DHTML compatible browser. If the javascript option is enabled, just surf and play.

The idea for this game comes from the www.the5k.org competition first held in 2000, the objective of which it is to encourage lean, efficient, functional, original and aesthetic web programming. A < 5kb version of Solitaire Mahjongg took part in the 2002 contest.

Solitaire Mahjongg
Copyright© 2002-2004 Thomas Weibel
4102 Binningen, Switzerland
www.mah-jongg.ch
(The most recent version 2.73, offering hints and moves counter options, additional tilesets and (challenging, in fact almost unbeatable) layouts, and even a zoom option.)