🎴 Tile Pairs
🧩 Logic · 0 playsTile Pairs
Clear the layout in pairs, joined by a path of no more than three straight lines.
About Tile Pairs
A cousin of mahjong solitaire played on a flat board: tiles are removed in identical pairs, but only when a clear path can join them — one that runs through empty space, turns at most twice, and may travel around the outside of the layout. That path rule turns a matching exercise into a spatial one, since every pair removed opens corridors for the pairs that remain, and taking tiles in a careless order seals off the centre of the board. Working from the outside inward, and clearing lanes toward buried tiles, is the shape of a sound game. Five layouts of increasing size are offered, along with a few hints.
How to Play
Select a tile, then select its identical partner to remove both. The two tiles must be joinable by a path of at most three straight segments through open space — the path may leave the board. Clear every tile from the layout to finish; a hint is available when you are stuck.
💡 Tips & Strategy
Take the outside before the inside. Tiles on the layout's rim can route their connection through the open space around the board, which makes them nearly always clearable — but only while the rim remains open. Every removal in the interior, by contrast, opens lanes; so spend the early game clearing edges and ends of rows, and let the centre loosen itself.
Before taking any pair, glance at the other copies. Most tiles exist four times, and the pair you match determines which two remain. Prefer the pairing that leaves the survivors near each other or near open space, and avoid the pairing that leaves one survivor buried mid-row with its partner across the board — that is how dead ends are manufactured.
Think in corridors. The path rule allows at most two turns, so a clearing that creates a straight open lane through the layout is worth more than one that nibbles a corner: every tile facing that lane can now reach every other tile facing it. Removals that connect two open areas are the shisen equivalent of developing a piece.
When the board offers several easy pairs, take the one that unblocks the most constrained tile — the tile walled in on three sides is the one that ends games. And use the hint sparingly but intelligently: when it shows a pair you had dismissed, the useful information is not the pair itself but the corridor it just proved open.