Mahjong Solitaire › All layouts › Tower Mahjong

Tower Mahjong

Tower Mahjong is a tall, narrow tower. It sits on a wide base and rises in the middle to five tiles high.

Five layers sounds hard, but this board plays easy. The tower is only six or eight tiles across, so its rows are short and tiles come free quickly as you dig down.

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 Tower layout is built

The two widest rows form the base. Above them, the tower is a narrow stack of short rows, highest in its upper middle.

Tips for Tower Mahjong

• Dig straight down from the top. Every tile you take from the tallest stacks opens the layer below.
• The short rows mean you can usually reach any tile. Don't rush, look for the pair that frees the most.
• Keep the base row for the end. Its two end tiles stay free throughout.

Tower layout at a glance

Difficulty

Easy

Tiles

144 (72 pairs)

Layers

5

Board size

10 tiles wide, 8 rows deep

Free at the start

38 tiles

Cleared in our tests

About 60%

The Tower layout stacks its 144 tiles in five layers: 52 on the table, 52 on layer 2, 28 on layer 3, 10 on layer 4, 2 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 Tower it cleared the board without a shuffle in about 60% of games. That is easier 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 easy 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. Butterfly MahjongEasy Two open wings and a slim body. The gentlest board to learn on. Garden MahjongEasy Four small courtyards that never block each other. Quick and calm. Arena MahjongEasy An oval ring of seating around an empty floor. Spider MahjongEasy A tall body with eight thin legs spread wide. Pyramid MahjongMedium Four tiers stacked into a solid block. Peel it from the edges.

See all 24 layouts, sorted by difficulty

Questions people ask

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