Mahjong Solitaire All layouts Arrow Mahjong

Arrow Mahjong

Arrow Mahjong is shaped like an arrow pointing right. A shaft three rows deep runs across the board and ends in a stacked arrowhead that rises to four tiles high.

It looks simple, but the shaft is the problem. Its rows run the full width of the board, so the tiles in the middle are pinned on both sides until you work in from the ends.

How to play

The rules are the same on every layout. Click two free tiles with the same face to remove them. A tile is free when nothing sits on top of it and its left or right side is open. Any flower matches any flower, and any season matches any season. Clear all 72 pairs to win. The how to play guide has pictures.

How the Arrow layout is built

The shaft is three rows deep and thirteen tiles long. The head widens above and below the shaft and is stacked highest where it meets it.

Tips for Arrow Mahjong

Take the high tiles in the arrowhead first. They block the most and nothing blocks them.
Work the shaft from both ends at once. Each tile you take from an end frees only the one next to it.
Watch your pairs in the middle row of the shaft. It is the deepest part of the board and the easiest place to bury two copies of the same tile.

Arrow layout at a glance

Difficulty: Hard
Tiles: 144 (72 pairs)
Layers: 4
Board size: 13 tiles wide, 9 rows deep
Free at the start: 26 tiles
Cleared in our tests: About 25%

The Arrow layout stacks its 144 tiles in four layers: 53 on the table, 53 on layer 2, 33 on layer 3, 5 on top.

How we rate difficulty. We had the computer play 200 games on each layout, picking moves the same way our Hint button does. On Arrow it cleared the board without a shuffle in about 25% of games. That is harder than the classic Turtle, which comes in at about 50%. People who plan ahead do better than that, but the order of the layouts stays much the same. The full list is on the all layouts page.