Christmas N Tiles

Underneath the tinsel sits a strict little economy. Tiles leave the festive layout and travel to a strip along the bottom, three matching ones cancel each other out, and the strip has room for only so many. Everything you do is a withdrawal from that space or a deposit back into it.

The layout tempts you constantly, because tiles are easy to reach and reaching costs nothing at the moment you click. The bill arrives later: a strip carrying four lonely tiles has almost no capacity left, and the board is then lost regardless of how much of the layout remains.

Anyone who arrives from the mahjong tradition will find the pairing instinct wrong here — three, not two — and that adjustment is most of the first minute. After that it becomes a question of discipline rather than eyesight.

1. Count the visible copies of a tile before you touch it.
2. Send tiles down to the strip with a click; three of a kind there cancel out.
3. Prefer tiles whose partners are already waiting below.
4. Track how many slots remain — that number, not the layout, decides the board.

Treat four occupied slots as your stop signal. Past that point, take only tiles that complete a set immediately; one more speculative pick is what turns a winnable layout into a stuck one.