Playing Mahjongg

You start with five levels of tiles which are stacked so some are covered up by the tiles on top. The harder the level you set in the Preferences dialog, the more tiles are covered when the game starts. The object of Gnome Mahjongg is to remove all the tiles from the game. To remove tiles you have to find matching pairs which look alike. A matching tile will usually have the same number of buttons or markings on it or will look similar to each other.

As an example, the highlighted tile, in the figure below, has six buttons. The matching tile is the one which also has six buttons. The tile is on the far left side on the bottom level. If you wanted to match the tile on the top level, you need to look for the tile with the same green and red symbol. Do you see a matching tile yet? There are three tiles, which are visible, that match the tile on the top level. On the left side, three tiles to the right of the highlighted tile, is the matching tile. You can't remove the pair yet because the tile isn't on the outside of the stack of tiles. Later I'll explain more fully which tiles can be removed and which tiles can't be removed even though they match. I'll let you find the other two matching tiles, which are visible, on your own.

Figure 1. Mahjongg's Main Window

Gnome Mahongg is played by pointing and clicking on the two tiles you want matched and then they are removed from the game. If the two tiles don't match, a dialog appears telling you this.

Figure 2. Information Dialog

Only tiles at the far left and right edges on each level can be selected. This is because you can't remove any tiles which aren't at the far left and far right sides. If the tiles are on a different level and at the left or right sides, those can be removed when you find another matching tile.

If you can't match any more tiles, a dialog will appear telling you no more tiles can be matched.

Figure 3. Information Dialog

Toolbar

The toolbar can be moved around the desktop. If you click on the far left side of it, you will be able to drag it any place on the desktop you wish. The toolbar also snaps into place at the top and left side of the Main Window in Gnome Mahjongg, but the default place the toolbar is located, and the best in my opinion, is under the menubar.

The toolbar contains the following buttons:

Menus

The menu bar, located at the top of the Main Window, contains the following menus: