Mahjong Solitaire

Interactive Tabletop Art

Soothsayer Rev 1.62.20

Workflow

Streamlined Menus

While you may certainly use standard menus for selecting Saved Filter Views, Collapsing Groups, Expanding Groups, and Printing Reports, you can STREAMLINE your workflow by using the high level menu that's available in cell N2. We also use N2 as a Semaphore.

Power Users who have submitted a puzzle, that now has it's own QR Code, will have editing privileges. Most other users will be Read Only, but they can use YourThreshold to move around and walk through the various puzzles and solution sets. The interactive Graphs and Tooltips, are delightful.

All Users: Relaxed and Enjoyable

  • 0 End of Day: Reset the puzzle so that subsequent users will see the whole picture

  • 1 Print a Grid Handout: For the Interactive Tabletop Art; the flip side has a QR Code

  • 2 Scan the QR Code: And use the read-only Apprentice Soothsayer on your Mobile

  • 3 Sidebar Apprentice: You can also use (and Refresh) Soothsayer on your Desktop

  • 4 Build: Use real Mahjong Tiles. The Feel, Sound, Kinetics, and Ambiance are wonderful

  • 5 Solve the Puzzle: With hints from the Apprentice Soothsayer, or watch a run through

  • 6 Share: Print solutions to share with your friends, along with the Grid Handout

Power Users: We have modeled Mahjong Solitaire puzzles as
sparce 18x18x5 DAGs with 24 local and 3 global Constraints

  • 07 Document Interesting On-Line puzzles: Using real tiles is far more engaging

  • 08 Analyze various Puzzles: Interesting Traps provide Interesting Puzzles

  • 09 Analysis and Threshold Control: Use the modeless widget to EXAMINE solution sets

  • 10 Click on the QR Code: You can load the Apprentice Soothsayer in a separate tab

  • 11 Test your Heuristics: How many Degrees of Freedom does YOUR approach provide

  • 12 Cut and Paste ARCHIVED solution sets: You can obviously do better (You Wish)

  • 13 Create Your OWN puzzles, from Scratch: This is a VERY deep Rabbit Hole

0 End of Day:

1 Print a Grid Handout:

2 Scan the QR Code:

3 Sidebar:

4 Build:

Using the previously mentioned grid, the Images provided by the Apprentice Soothsayer, and detailed printouts make it quite easy, it’s actually enjoyable, to build Interactive Tabletop Art puzzles.

The confusing part is deciding which Tiles belong to which Tile Names so, throughout Soothsayer, we’ve included Tile Images adjacent to the Tile Names.

  • The basic Tile Set is nicely defined in Wikipedia.

  • Mahjong Solitaire Soothsayer uses a set of images that was purchased from DreamyPngArt, which is one of the few sites that offer the unadorned Glyphs that we wanted, so that we could use Chebyshev Shadowing to indicate Constraints and Reveals.

  • You’ll also see images from the Chemist AI Tile Set (Scroll to the bottom of the page) that we use for our personal Interactive Tabletop Art.

  • The Tile Doctor Lookup tab has cells that are 23mmx30mm, so that we can display the Tile Images full sized. We’d be happy to include your favorite Tile Set if you provide a link.

Suits, Honors, and Bonus Tiles

  • 3×9×4=108 There are 3 Suits that have 4 each of 9 different tiles:

    • Crak (Chinese Numbers)

    • Bam (Bamboo) and the 1 Bam is usually an elaborate Bird Icon

    • Dot (Coins)

  • 4×4 + 3×4 + 1×4 = 32 The Honors are 4 Winds, 3 Virtues (Dragons), and 1 Fill in

    • The traditional Chinese compass is East, South, West, North. The only issue with the Winds is that they are usually just Ideograms.

    • The three traditional Virtues are Prosperity, Longevity, and Happiness, but Joy is often added to “complete the foursome.”

      • In the 1920s, when Mahjong was introduced in America, to popularize the game they introduced 3 Dragons, in lieu of the 3 Virtues. There was an Ideogram for the Red Dragon and the Green Dragon, but the White Dragon was represented by a Blank (white) tile that was often called Soap.

        • Laser engraving has become the norm for tile production, and the Dragons have gotten more and more elaborate. A Blue Dragon was introduced because it’s hard to get fancy with White on White.

        • As was the case with Joy, Eagle “completes the foursome.”

        • The ideograms for Red Dragon and Green Dragon have fallen into disuse, so we have repurposed them, for YourThreshold and Eagle

  • 4×2 + 4×2 = 16 Bonus Tiles are a complete zoo. Bonus tiles only come in Pairs, rather than the Quads that are needed for interesting game design, but their lack of importance in Game Design allows for a wonderful Aesthetic.

    • Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter usually have ideograms for
      Tulips, Sunshine, Maple Leaves, and Snowflakes,
      although you will occasionally see additional Flowers, or the evicted Virtues
      Lavender, Carnation, Sun Flower, and Red Rose
      Prosperity, Longevity, Happiness, and Joy

    • Flowers are holding their own, mostly because Flowers are inherently artistic

      Plum Blossom, Orchid, Chrysanthemum (Mums), Bamboo (Baby’s Breath)

  • 10 Jokers (which are an American thing) brings the total to 166 tiles

  • A Riichi (Japanese) tile set doesn’t have Jokers nor Eagles, but the other 144 tiles are the same. The Riichi tiles are also a bit smaller at 20×25 rather than 23×30.

5 Solve the Puzzle:

6 Share:

7 Document Interesting On-Line puzzles:

8 Analyze various Puzzles:

‍9 Analysis and Threshold Control:

10 Click on the QR Code:

11 Test your Heuristics:

A well-done Mathematical Analysis is available on Wikipedia, along with some interesting history.

12 Cut and Paste ARCHIVED solution sets:

13 Create Your OWN puzzles, from Scratch: