Mahjong Solitaire › All layouts › Castle Mahjong

Castle Mahjong

Castle Mahjong is a square castle seen from above. Thick outer walls run around the edge, a tower stands at each corner, and a separate keep sits in the courtyard in the middle.

Because the keep is set apart from the walls, the board breaks into short pieces. That gives you more free tiles than most layouts of this height.

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 Castle layout is built

The corner towers rise four tiles high. The walls are two high on the outside and one high on the inside. The keep is a square block two high with a four-high centre.

Tips for Castle Mahjong

• Take down the corner towers first. Each one is four high and frees two walls when it goes.
• The keep stands on its own. Its top tiles are free early and make good partners for wall tiles.
• The top and bottom walls are the long rows here. Keep their end tiles for later in the game.

Castle layout at a glance

Difficulty

Medium

Tiles

144 (72 pairs)

Layers

4

Board size

12 tiles wide, 8 rows deep

Free at the start

44 tiles

Cleared in our tests

About 50%

The Castle layout stacks its 144 tiles in four layers: 64 on the table, 56 on layer 2, 16 on layer 3, 8 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 Castle it cleared the board without a shuffle in about 50% of games. That is about the same as the classic Turtle. 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.

More medium layouts and favourites

Every layout uses the same 144 tiles and the same rules. The shape is what changes, and the shape decides how hard the game is.

Turtle MahjongClassic The classic 144-tile board. Five layers, a long tail at each end. Pyramid MahjongMedium Four tiers stacked into a solid block. Peel it from the edges. Bridge MahjongMedium A long double-deck span between four towers. Crab MahjongMedium A domed shell with claws reaching out at each corner. Fish MahjongMedium A rounded body with a raised middle and a split tail. Heart MahjongMedium Two raised lobes narrowing to a single point.

See all 24 layouts, sorted by difficulty

Questions people ask

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