Mahjong Solitaire › All layouts › Owl Mahjong

Owl Mahjong

Owl Mahjong is an owl's face and body. Two big round eyes are stacked four tiles high, there is a tuft at each ear, and two little feet stick out at the bottom.

Plenty of tiles are free when you start, 48 in all. It is still a hard board, because the face is twelve tiles across and the eyes sit right in the middle of those long rows.

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 Owl layout is built

The base layer covers the whole owl. The face is raised to two and three tiles, and each eye peaks at four.

Tips for Owl Mahjong

• Take the eyes down early. Each one is four high and pins the rows on either side.
• Don't spend the easy tiles first. The feet, ear tufts and body edge stay free, so keep them as partners.
• Look out for two copies of a tile stacked in the same eye. If you see the other two copies free, think before matching them.

Owl layout at a glance

Difficulty

Hard

Tiles

144 (72 pairs)

Layers

4

Board size

12 tiles wide, 9 rows deep

Free at the start

48 tiles

Cleared in our tests

About 30%

The Owl layout stacks its 144 tiles in four layers: 82 on the table, 44 on layer 2, 14 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 Owl it cleared the board without a shuffle in about 30% 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.

More hard 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. Dragon MahjongHard Long and low with a tall ridge down the middle. Fortress MahjongHard Five walls, one inside the next. The hardest board here. Arrow MahjongHard A long shaft and a raised head pointing right. Cat MahjongHard A cat face with pointed ears, raised eyes and a nose. Cloud MahjongHard A soft-looking puff with a deceptively stubborn middle.

See all 24 layouts, sorted by difficulty

Questions people ask

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