Why a Mahjong Solitaire Board Here Never Deals You a Dead End
Every board in Friends at Mahjong Solitaire's browser game is checked for solvability before it's dealt, so you never lose a game to a shuffle that locked you out before you made a single move.
How a Mahjong Solitaire board can quietly go bad
Mahjong Solitaire looks simple — clear the board by matching pairs of free tiles, meaning tiles with nothing covering them and at least one open side. But the shuffle that builds the board happens before you ever see it. An unsolvable deal can leave you with no legal pairs before the board is cleared, even if you haven't made a mistake.
What "checked before it reaches you" actually means here
Friends at Mahjong Solitaire checks every deal for solvability before it's handed to you. That's the whole promise: the board you're looking at was already confirmed to have a path through it before the first tile was drawn on your screen. If you get stuck, it isn't because you were dealt an unsolvable shuffle.
Help that shows you a move, not one that plays it for you
The hint highlights the pair that opens up the most of the board, so you can see a good move and still make it yourself. It doesn't explain the board or chain moves together for you — it points, you decide. Paired with that, every blocked tile is dimmed, so it's always visually obvious what's actually playable and what isn't, without needing to study the stack.
Built for the way people actually hold a phone
Boards are sized to the width of a real phone screen rather than squeezed to fit one. Tiles don't drop below a comfortable touch size just because the board is dense, and full screen means full screen.
One board a day, with nothing to lose by skipping it
The Daily board is generated from the date rather than pulled from a server, so every player gets the same deal on the same day without anyone keeping score behind the scenes. Miss a day and nothing resets. There's no streak to protect and no penalty for missing a day.
A Journey that starts free and keeps going
The Journey runs 100 levels through named locations — Lexington, Palm Beach, Newport, New York. The first ten are free, with every helper included. The remaining levels unlock with a one-time purchase made in the iPhone app, and it applies to both the app and the web. Pricing is listed on the home page.
Play it with someone, privately
Friends lets you send someone the exact board you just played, or take the same deal at the same time and compare notes afterward. It's invite-only, with no public chat attached.
If you've been burned by an unsolvable deal, that's the specific problem this version is built to avoid: the check happens before the deal reaches you, every time.