Mahjong Solitaire All layouts Fish Mahjong

Fish Mahjong

Fish Mahjong is a fish swimming left. The body is a rounded oval that rises to four tiles in the middle, and a split tail fans out on the right.

The tail tiles are flat and spread out, so they free up early. The body is where the work is: its middle row is long and stacked high.

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 Fish layout is built

The body is seven rows deep and up to fourteen tiles across. The tail is two short forks of single tiles.

Tips for Fish Mahjong

Take the raised middle of the body early. It is four high and covers the longest row on the board.
Use the tail tiles as partners, not as a first target. They stay free for most of the game.
The edge of the body is only one tile high. Clearing it opens the second layer from the side.

Fish layout at a glance

Difficulty: Medium
Tiles: 144 (72 pairs)
Layers: 4
Board size: 15 tiles wide, 7 rows deep
Free at the start: 40 tiles
Cleared in our tests: About 35%

The Fish layout stacks its 144 tiles in four layers: 77 on the table, 42 on layer 2, 21 on layer 3, 4 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 Fish it cleared the board without a shuffle in about 35% 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.