What is Onet?

Onet is a tile matching puzzle where two identical tiles can be removed when a line with no more than two turns can join them. You may know it by another name.

Many names, one idea

The game is called Onet, Onet Connect, Connect, Link, Pair Connect, Mahjong Connect or Shisen-Sho, depending on the country and the tiles used. In Vietnam it is loved as the animal-connecting game, in Europe it often appears with mahjong tiles.

Where it comes from

Its roots are in Shisen-Sho, a Japanese solitaire game played with mahjong tiles in the late 1980s, where tiles are joined by a path with at most two turns. Later computer and phone versions swapped the mahjong tiles for friendly pictures and filled the whole board.

Onet and mahjong solitaire

In mahjong solitaire you remove free tiles from a stacked pile. In Onet the board is flat and the question is whether a path can reach between two tiles. Both are calm, but Onet is easier to learn and needs no knowledge of mahjong symbols.

How Connect Garden plays it

Connect Garden keeps the classic two-turn rule and adds a garden that grows as you play, gentle new tile types, many tile packs and your own photos.

Questions and answers

Is Onet the same as Shisen-Sho?

They use the same joining rule. Shisen-Sho traditionally uses mahjong tiles and is played as solitaire on a fixed layout; Onet games use pictures and come in many layouts and levels.