Mahjong tiles are beautiful and, to a newcomer, indistinguishable. Five minutes of orientation cuts your matching time substantially, because you stop reading each tile and start recognising it.
The three suits
Each suit runs 1 to 9 with four copies of every number — 36 tiles per suit, 108 in total.
- Circles (dots) — the number is shown as that many circular discs. Easy to read: just count the circles.
- Bamboo (sticks) — that many bamboo sticks. In traditional sets the 1 of bamboo is drawn as a bird, which confuses everyone once. Here it is drawn as a single stick for clarity.
- Characters (wan) — a Chinese numeral above the character 萬, meaning ten thousand. These need the most learning because you are reading a numeral rather than counting shapes.
The Chinese numerals one to nine are 一 二 三 四 五 六 七 八 九. The first three are just that many horizontal strokes, which covers a third of the suit immediately.
Winds
Four tiles, four copies each: 東 east, 南 south, 西 west, 北 north. Sixteen tiles in total. They have no numbers and no ordering in solitaire — each matches only its own wind.
Dragons
Three tiles, four copies each, twelve in total.
- Red dragon — 中, drawn in red. Means 'centre'.
- Green dragon — 發, drawn in green. Means 'prosper'.
- White dragon — a plain blue-outlined rectangle, sometimes blank. The frame is the tile.
The white dragon catches people out because it looks like an error or an unfinished tile. It is not — the empty frame is the design.
Flowers and seasons
Eight tiles, one copy each, and the only tiles with a special matching rule: any of them matches any other. Four flowers — 梅 plum, 蘭 orchid, 菊 chrysanthemum, 竹 bamboo — and four seasons — 春 spring, 夏 summer, 秋 autumn, 冬 winter.
In practice this makes them the most flexible tiles on the board. Two flowers visible anywhere can always be paired, regardless of which specific ones they are.
Use colour before shape
The board colours each group differently — green for bamboo, red for characters, blue for circles, purple for flowers. Scanning by colour narrows the search before you read a single tile.
Matching quickly
The fastest method is a two-stage scan. First identify the group by colour, then check the value. That is far quicker than reading every tile in full, and it works because the colours are distinct enough to sort at a glance.
The numbers that cause most hesitation are the higher characters — 六 七 八 九 — and circles above six, where counting takes a moment. It is worth learning those four numerals specifically.
Where these come from
The set is inherited from four-player mahjong, where the suits form runs and sets, the winds correspond to seat positions, and the flowers are bonus tiles that score extra. None of that structure applies in solitaire, where they are simply 144 tiles in 72 pairs — but it explains why the set has the shape it does.