

The simple but addictive game on your device is actually Mahjong solitaire and it’s a perfect way of zoning-out on a long train journey. They share the same tiles, but that’s about it. Whatever its roots, Mahjong is a complex, nuanced game that can take years to master… and bears absolutely no resemblance to the Mahjong app installed on your iPad. There’s a lot of debate surrounding the origins of Mahjong (麻將): certain historians argue that the tile-based game evolved during the priceless-vase-producing Ming dynasty of 1368 to 1644, but most experts agree that the modern version was perfected in the late nineteenth century.
