About Triple Tile
Triple Tile is the mahjong-style match game played three at a time rather
than two. Tiles are stacked in storeys on the table, and any tile with
nothing resting on top of it can be lifted onto the bench below. Collect
three of the same face and they clear themselves. Clear the table and the
board is done.
The bench is what makes it a puzzle rather than a chore. It holds six
tiles and no more, so every tile you lift without a plan is a slot you no
longer have. Fill all six with tiles that do not make a triple and the
table is lost.
You get three undos a table, and they are an allowance
rather than a safety net: enough to buy back a tile you tapped without
looking, nowhere near enough to play the table by trial and error. An
undo takes the newest tile off the bench and puts it back where it came
from. It cannot reach back through a match — three that agreed are gone
for good — and it cannot rescue a lost table, because the sixth tile ends
the game as it lands. The tile worth spending an undo on is always the
fifth. Past that the way back is Deal again, which lays
out the same table from the start; repeated attempts cost nothing but the
minutes, which is what makes the Labyrinth worth being nasty.
Three tables are set every day at midnight UTC, the same three for
everybody: the Courtyard at thirty-six tiles, the
Pagoda at seventy-two and the Labyrinth at a hundred
and eight. Each is built by walking a solution out tile by tile, parking
tiles on the bench the way you have to, so every board can be cleared and
the recorded route never needs more than four of the six bench slots. Every face on a table has exactly two triples, so a tile
on the bench always has five siblings still out there. What can go wrong
is entirely your own bookkeeping, which is the game.
Hint rings a set you could actually collect from where
you are standing — which is a harder question than it sounds, because the
answer depends on the bench as much as on the table. Three tiles of a
face on the table is no use to you with five slots gone; two on the bench
and one on the table is a set even with the bench nearly full, because
the third tile clears the lot as it lands. It will not ring anything you
have not the room to take, and when it says there is nothing, there is
nothing — that is the moment to start lifting carefully.
The usual advice holds: clear the top storeys before you dig, take the
third of a face as soon as you can see it rather than banking it, and
never spend the last two slots on faces you have not already spotted a
second copy of. Progress is kept where you left it, so the Labyrinth is
quite reasonably two sittings.