“Don’t judge a book by its cover” is the sort of idiom that everyone has heard since they were little and yet, not many people know that even in the context of a mahjong game, this idiom still rings true. In this article, we’ll attempt to do just that by showing you 5 deceptively-simple layouts in TheMahjong.com that may actually require a bit more brain power to solve.

The Great Wall

When all the tiles are presented in the same way that is shown in The Great Wall, you may often jump to the immediately conclusion that this may be the easiest layout to play. However, the reality is much different from that. Why? Well, by being part of a giant flat wall, most of the tiles are locked in a horizontal manner, which is among one of the most challenging tile configurations to clear since you will have no choice but to get through them one by one.

Not to mention, the move you make here is very important. You may accidentally match 2 tiles earlier on in the game only to find that you needed those tiles to clear the remaining two tiles that are somehow permanently separated and cannot be removed together.

But well, at least the tiles aren’t stacked so you can see all the tiles clearly in front of you... all you need to do now is to employ a bit of strategy and planning ahead to make sure that you won’t need either the undo or the shuffle, or even end up stuck with an unsolvable puzzle situation.

Tower and Walls

Talking about stacked tiles, our next deceptively-simple mahjong layout that you can test your puzzling skills with is the Tower and Walls. Despite looking pretty simple enough to clear, it has tiles stacked to about 4 to 5 layers-high and worst, each tile is stacked exactly on top one another so you can only uncover 2 new tiles after removing one set of matching tiles.

Similar to The Great Wall’s challenge, it is crucial to remove the correct pair of tiles or you may end up with 2 matching tiles stacked together which is literally impossible to solve if you’ve already remove the other pair of tiles and, like the hardcore gamer that you are, you flat-out refused to use any undo or shuffle.

Tree of Life

Unlike the first two layouts, the Tree of Life layout is challenging in a slightly different way mainly because it has over 60 matches (vary depending on which version of the layout you get) available right from the get-go. Having too many matching choices will prove to be a boon rather than an advantage since you will need to be extra careful when matching tiles. After all, you may just end up with tiles that are somehow locked in a row like in The Great Wall, or stacked together like in the Tower and Walls.

Of course, that’s not including the fact that with its rather messy arrangement, you may find it a tad bit hard to spot tiles that are available for matching... unless you decide to make things easier for yourself by cheating a little and turning on the Highlight Available Tiles option.

Kumo

Last but not least, the layout that looks simple enough but is in actuality quite a devilish little puzzle to solve – the Kumo. In this layout, there are just so many individual tiles, making it easy enough for you to find matches, but the trick here is that most of them are stacked up to 4 times and well, making the correct matches might not be as easy as finding a match. I’d say it presents a challenge that’s a combination of the Tower and Walls and the Tree of Life.


You may scoff at these mahjong layouts for now, but you may not be so when you’re knee deep in it, trying to figure out how to continue the puzzle without using any undo or shuffle (which, if you do, is just as good as admitting defeat), all the while doing your best to avoid getting that dreaded “unsolvable puzzle” scenario where there are no more moves to be had and you are forced to either restart the game or use the shuffle.

So, are you up to the challenge? Give these mahjong layouts a try and see if you’ve changed your mind about how “hardcore” (in a puzzling sort of way) mahjong solitaire games are!