Archive

You already know how to play this. Here is the one thing that is different.

Classic mahjong solitaire has one genuinely bad moment, and everyone who has played it knows the one: somewhere around the middle of the board you take a pair that quietly makes the rest impossible — and the game says nothing. You keep playing. You clear another thirty tiles. Twenty minutes later it runs out of moves and the mistake that did it is long gone.

We measured how bad it is. On a shuffled board, a careless player strands it  56.5% of the time, and then plays a median of 22 more moves after the game is already over.

Archive refuses that match. If taking a pair would leave the board unfinishable, it is not played — it tells you so, tells you why, and the board stays exactly as it was. Every position you ever look at can still be cleared. So there is nothing to undo, and no undo button.

-Three layouts. The Turtle — 144 tiles, tail, head and summit, the one everybody
recognizes. Desk at 96. Pocket at 72 and eight tiles across, built backwards from a phone held in one hand.

- Clean or not. You cannot lose a board here, so the only thing you can do badly is get
stopped. Clearing one without the guardrail ever stepping in is *clean*, and that is the only record kept.

- A hint that will not lie to you. It never suggests a move that ruins the board, which no other mahjong hint button anywhere can say.

- Tap a blocked tile and it tells you which of the two reasons it is — covered, or boxed in.

- Flowers and seasons carry a badge, so the one rule that confuses everybody is visible rather
than something you have to be told.

- A board a day at each size, the same board for everyone.

- A result you can send.** One line — `Archive · 6 Oct · Turtle · 6:14 · clean` — copied or shared from the end of a board, with nothing in it that spoils the board for the next person.

- Light and dark, keyboard play, a motion setting, and no sound at all.

Your board is saved as you go, so a reload or a closed tab does not cost you a Turtle.

No streak nagging you, no achievements, no popups, nothing to sign up for. Clearing the board stops the clock and tells you whether it was clean. That is the entire celebration, and it is enough.

Made for people who are bored at a desk, by someone who was.