Forty questions with exact answers
Not what to discard. Whether the thing you are chasing is still arithmetically alive, whether the rule you are leaning on says what you think it says, and what the card is actually asking for.
Nothing below asks what you would pass or which discard is safest. Those questions have no rulebook behind them and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Everything here has an exact answer that follows from a rule, and each answer says which rule.
You will need your own current card to play. You will not need it for these — no line from the card is reproduced anywhere on this page, which is also why these drills do not expire each spring.
Counting what is gone
Every group you chase is a bet that enough copies are still available. There are four of each numbered tile, wind and dragon — and eight flowers. The count is lying face up in the middle of the table, and it is the only thing that tells you a hand has died.
You are chasing a kong of 5 dots. Two are on your rack. Then you look at the table.
Can you still make that kong?
Show the answer
No. Not now, not later, not with a joker.
There are four of every numbered tile. Four 5 dots exist in the set — that is the whole supply, and it never grows.
Two are on your rack. Two are lying in the discards, dead. Two plus two is four.
A joker does not help, because a joker stands in for a tile you could otherwise have. It does not create material you have already lost.
The most expensive habit at a beginner table is chasing a hand that died ten discards ago. Nobody announces it. The count is always available.
You want a pung of 3 bams. You hold one. You have no jokers.
Can you still make the pung from natural tiles?
Show the answer
No. Exactly one 3 bam is unaccounted for, and you need two more.
Four exist. One on your rack, two in the discards. That leaves one, somewhere.
A pung is three identical tiles. You have one and can find at most one more.
"There must be more out there" is the feeling, and it is wrong. There are exactly four, and once you can name where three of them are, the arithmetic is finished.
Same table as the last drill. Same two 3 bams gone. But this time there is a joker on your rack.
Now can you make the pung?
Show the answer
Yes. One held, one still out there, and the joker makes three.
The counting has not changed. What changed is that you are no longer looking for two tiles. You are looking for one.
A joker may stand in for any tile inside a group of three or more identical tiles. A pung is three, so 3 bam, 3 bam, joker is a legal grouping.
Counting alone said dead. The joker rule alone said nothing. You need both halves in your head at once, and that combination is the most useful arithmetic in this game.
You are two flowers into a kong of flowers. Four more are face up in the discards.
Is the kong still possible?
Show the answer
Yes — just. Two flowers are unaccounted for, and you need exactly two.
This is where the four-of-each rule betrays you. Flowers are the exception: there are eight, and every one is interchangeable with every other. The artwork, the numbering and the seasons carry no meaning at all.
Two held, four discarded. Eight minus six is two, and two is exactly what you need.
The right question is never "how many are left" in the abstract. It is "how many of THIS tile exist", and for flowers the answer is eight.
A quint is five identical tiles. You are looking at a line that wants one.
You hold all four 7 craks. How many jokers does that quint need?
Show the answer
At least one. Always. There is no such thing as a natural quint.
Only four of any numbered tile exist. A quint asks for five. The fifth can only ever be a joker, no matter how the hand is played or how lucky you get.
A quint is five tiles, which is three or more, so jokers are allowed in it.
Same logic one step further: a sextet is six, so it needs at least two jokers.
This turns a vague worry into a fixed price. Before you commit to a quint you know exactly how many jokers it costs, and you can count how many you have.
Tiles locked in somebody else's exposure are as gone as tiles in the discards.
You need a kong of 2 dots. Possible?
Show the answer
No. Two on your rack, two naturals in their pung. All four are accounted for.
Their pung shows three tiles but only two of them are 2 dots — the middle one is a joker. So the natural count is your two plus their two, which is the whole supply.
The joker in their pung is the tell. They ran out of 2 dots as well, which is why they had to spend one.
Beginners count the discards and stop. Exposures are the other half of the ledger, and they are more informative, because tiles in an exposure are never coming back.
Jokers are a supply too. There are eight in the set.
You hold one joker. How many are unaccounted for?
Show the answer
Two.
Eight jokers exist. Two are dead in the discards, three are sitting in exposures across the table, one is on your rack. That is six.
Two are somewhere else — in the wall, or concealed on a rack.
Jokers in exposures are not entirely out of reach: an exposed joker can be redeemed if you have the natural tile it is standing in for. Jokers in the discards are gone forever. Counting them separately is the difference.
Winds count the same way everything else does. Four of each.
You want a kong of easts. Where does that stand?
Show the answer
Dead. Two held, two discarded, four accounted for.
There are four east winds, exactly as there are four 5 dots. Winds feel special because they have names, but the supply is identical.
You could still make a pair of easts — you already have one — but the kong is finished.
Knowing a kong is dead early is worth more than knowing it late, because the pair you already hold may still be worth something to a different line.
Your hand ends in a pair of green dragons. You hold one.
Can that pair still happen?
Show the answer
No, and no joker can rescue it.
Four green dragons exist. One is on your rack and three are in the discards. There is no fourth green coming.
And the joker rule closes the other door: a joker may never sit in a pair.
The hand needs a different pair, or a different line.
Every hand on the card ends in a pair somewhere, and the pair is the part a joker can never help with. When you count, count the pair first — it is the most fragile group you own.
You are one tile from a kong of 6 dots, and it is late in the hand.
How many 6 dots can still reach you?
Show the answer
None. Three on your rack, one in the discards.
Three plus one is four, and four is all there are. The pung of 7 dots across the table is a decoy — it tells you nothing about 6 dots at all.
The kong is dead. The pung you already hold is not.
Reading the table means reading the tiles that matter to YOUR hand. A big exposure in the same suit feels relevant and often is not.
The rules behind this chapter — how many of each tile exist — are on Tiles & groupings, one printed page. Say where to send it and it is yours, along with the other three sheets and the starter guide.
Jokers
One line covers most of it: a joker stands in for any tile inside a group of three or more identical tiles, and never below three. Almost every joker mistake at a real table is either that rule, or doing a legal thing at the wrong moment in the turn.
Your hand needs a pair of soap. You hold one, and a joker.
Can the joker be the second soap?
Show the answer
No — and it would still be no if every other soap were sitting in the wall.
The rule first. A joker stands in only inside a group of three or more identical tiles. A pair is two. Never allowed.
The count second. One held, three discarded. All four accounted for.
The first reason is the one to remember, because it holds whatever the discards look like.
The joker rule is about the size of the group, not about how badly you want the tile.
You hold three 8 craks and need a fourth for the kong. Somebody has just discarded a joker.
Can you claim that joker to finish the kong?
Show the answer
No. A discarded joker is dead forever.
Once a joker hits the table nobody can claim it — not for an exposure, not to win. It sits there for the rest of the game as a very expensive piece of decoration.
The useful corollary: discarding a joker is always safe. Nobody can punish you for it, because nobody can pick it up.
You hold one 8 bam. Somebody discards an 8 bam and you want to claim it for a pung — taking the joker off the exposed kong across the table to be your third tile.
Is that a legal way to make the exposure?
Show the answer
No. You may not claim a discard, take a joker, and use that joker to finish the exposure you just made.
The turn has an order and the order is the rule: pick or claim, check the card for mahjong, then any joker exchanges, then discard and name it.
The exchange happens after the claim is complete, so the exposure you claim with has to stand up on its own tiles first. Redeeming out of order makes your hand dead.
Most joker mistakes are not about which tiles are legal. They are about doing a legal thing at the wrong moment in the turn.
Mid-hand, a player lays down five jokers and calls it a quint.
Is that a legal exposure?
Show the answer
No. Mid-hand, four jokers is the ceiling — the fifth tile has to be the one they claimed.
A quint is five tiles, so jokers are allowed inside it. The group-size rule is satisfied and that is not the problem.
An exposure made during play exists because a discard was claimed, and it has to contain that discard. So a quint laid down mid-hand can hold at most four jokers: one natural tile is the whole requirement, and it must be the claimed one.
The one place five jokers is legal: an exposure made to declare mahjong. Nothing was claimed here and nobody declared anything, so it is neither.
Two separate tests, and a lot of joker questions need both: is the group big enough for jokers, and is this exposure entitled to exist at all? Drill 20 passes the second test with only one natural tile, which is the minimum.
It is the first pass. Three tiles come to you from your right, and one of them is a joker.
The joker arrived in the three you were just handed.
What do you do with it?
Show the answer
Give it straight back and say so out loud. Receiving one is against the rules too.
You never pass a joker — at any point, in any pass, blind or not. The half nobody mentions is that accepting one is also a breach. You do not get to keep it.
Passing a joker is one of the ways a hand goes dead, so the person who sent it has a problem whether or not you say anything. Saying it out loud is how it gets fixed rather than discovered three passes later.
Separate your jokers from the rest of your hand before the Charleston starts. You will not pass what you cannot pick up by accident.
You have just picked from the wall. You hold a natural 4 bam and you can see two jokers.
Whose joker can you take, and which one?
Show the answer
The one in the exposed pung across the table, in exchange for your natural 4 bam.
You may redeem a joker that is sitting in an exposure, by giving the natural tile it is standing in for. That pung is 4 bams, so a 4 bam buys the joker out of it.
A joker on somebody's rack, concealed, is not available — you cannot see it and you cannot ask for it.
The order matters: you have already picked, so you are at step three of your turn. This is exactly when the exchange is allowed.
Several exchanges are allowed in one turn if you have the tiles for all of them. The limit is your natural tiles, not a quota.
You are holding a joker and you would much rather have the natural 2 crak sitting in your own exposed pung.
Can you swap your joker into that pung and take a 2 crak back?
Show the answer
No. The exchange only runs one way.
You take a joker out of an exposure by putting the natural tile in. You cannot push a joker into an exposure to pull a natural one out.
Tiles that go into an exposure stay there. The exchange exists to free a joker, not to reshuffle a group you have already laid down.
The instinct behind this is usually "a joker is more useful than a 2 crak", and it is — which is exactly why the rule runs one way.
A line asks for a single tile — one 9 dot, on its own. You hold a joker and no 9 dot.
Can a joker be that single?
Show the answer
No. One tile is below three, so no joker.
Single (1 tile): never. Pair (2 tiles): never. Pung (3): allowed. Kong (4): allowed. Quint (5): allowed. Sextet (6): allowed.
Two jokers on your rack and both of them are useless for this particular slot. They are not useless for the hand — the pungs would take them happily.
Singles-and-pairs lines are the ones jokers cannot touch, and that is the whole reason they are scored differently from the rest of the card.
You claim a discarded 5 bam. You already hold one 5 bam and two jokers.
Can you expose a kong of 5 bams: claimed tile, your 5 bam, and both jokers?
Show the answer
Yes. Four tiles is a group of three or more, and the exposure contains the claimed tile.
Both tests pass. A kong is four, so jokers are allowed. And the exposure contains the 5 bam you just claimed, which is what entitles it to exist.
Two jokers in one group is fine — there is no limit on how many, only on how small the group can be.
It costs you both jokers. Legal is not the same as wise, and this is one of the places where the rules let you do something the strategy pages argue about.
Somebody exposes a pung by laying down a claimed 6 crak with two jokers.
Legal?
Show the answer
Yes. Three tiles, and the claimed tile is in it.
A pung is three, so jokers are allowed. The exposure contains the tile that was claimed, so it is entitled to exist.
Compare it with the five jokers in drill 14: that failed the second test, not the first.
Worth noticing what this tells you about their hand: they have spent two jokers on one group, so they are probably short of them now.
The rules behind this chapter — where a joker may sit, and the exchange — are on Playing & claiming, one printed page. Say where to send it and it is yours, along with the other three sheets and the starter guide.
Claiming, exposing, and the shape of a turn
Whether you may take a tile is not a matter of speed or of wanting it. It is a matter of what has already happened, what you intend to build with it, and whether your rack is the right length. All three are checkable in the moment.
The player across from you discards a 4 crak and names it. You want it. Before you get a word out, the player to the discarder's right takes a tile from the wall and racks it.
Can you still call the 4 crak?
Show the answer
No. The window shut when that tile was picked and racked.
The window is not a length of time and it is not about who is quickest. It closes on a specific event: the player to the discarder's right has picked from the wall and racked it. Or discarded. Or declared mahjong. Or started a joker exchange.
Because it is an event and not a stopwatch, the skill is watching that one player's hands. If they are reaching for the wall, you have already run out of time.
A 3 dot is discarded. You call it, and so does another player. Neither of you has put any tiles down. You are next in turn after the discarder; they are not.
Who gets it?
Show the answer
You. Within the same kind of claim, turn order decides.
The tile goes to whoever would have played next anyway. The logic is that turn order was always going to reach them first, so the claim does not jump anybody who was not already going to be jumped.
Speed decides nothing. Volume decides nothing.
Most tables get this one wrong in the same direction — they give it to whoever spoke first. It is worth knowing precisely, because it comes up constantly and it is settled.
Same 3 dot, same two claimants, same turn order. But this time the other player had already begun laying tiles down for that specific tile before you spoke.
Does turn order still decide?
Show the answer
No. They had already begun exposing for that tile, so it is theirs.
This is the exception inside the turn-order rule, and it is narrow: the tiles must already be coming down, and they must be coming down for that tile.
Turn order settles ties between two claims. It does not reverse an exposure that has already started.
The narrowness matters. "I was about to" is not the exception. Tiles in motion are.
You hold one 7 bam and your hand wants a pair of them. A 7 bam is discarded.
Can you claim it to complete the pair?
Show the answer
No — not unless that tile wins you the hand outright.
A discard can be claimed for an exposure, or to declare mahjong. A pair is two tiles, which is not a legal exposure, so there is nothing to expose for.
The one way it works: if the 7 bam completes your whole hand, you claim it as the winning tile. That is a mahjong claim, not an exposure.
This is why singles-and-pairs hands play so differently. Most of the hand can only be filled from the wall, and the table cannot help you.
You are playing a concealed line — the card marks it C. A tile you need is discarded, and it would complete a pung for you.
Can you claim it?
Show the answer
No. On a concealed hand you may claim a discard only as the tile that wins outright.
X is exposed: you build groupings and show them on top of your rack as you go. C is concealed: the hand stays hidden, and you may claim a discard only to declare mahjong.
Claiming that 8 dot to build a pung would mean showing tiles, and showing tiles on a C hand is one of the ways a hand goes dead.
Check the letter before you reach for a tile, not after. The letter changes what the whole game can do for you.
A 9 crak is discarded. You say "take" and start putting your two 9 craks on top of your rack — and then realise the tile was already claimed by the player before you.
Can you pick your two tiles back up?
Show the answer
No. Once tiles are down, they are down.
Putting tiles on top of your rack is not a proposal, it is an exposure. It does not become provisional because the claim behind it failed.
You are now showing two tiles that belong to no legal grouping, which is an exposure that matches no hand — one of the standard ways a hand is dead.
The order that keeps you safe: get the tile first, then lay tiles down. Never the other way round, however certain you are.
It is your turn. You have picked from the wall and you have not discarded yet. Before you think about which tile to throw, count.
How many tiles should be there, and how many are?
Show the answer
Fifteen. There should be fourteen. You are holding one tile too many.
Fourteen tiles during your turn, thirteen after you discard. That is the whole rule and it does not vary once the Charleston is over.
Count the rack: three, six, nine, eleven, twelve, and three more. Fifteen.
Holding the wrong number of tiles is the first item on the list of what makes a hand dead.
This is the quietest way a hand dies. Nothing announces it and the tiles all look fine. Counting your rack after every pick takes a second.
You claimed a discard for a pung and exposed it. Now you look down at what is left.
Your exposed pung of 3 dots is on top of the rack, not counted here.
Is your hand the right length?
Show the answer
Yes. Eleven concealed plus three exposed is fourteen — and you have not discarded yet.
Exposed tiles still belong to your hand. The count that matters is everything you own, concealed and exposed together.
Eleven on the rack, three on top, fourteen in total, and a discard still to come. After you throw, thirteen.
People count only what is hidden and panic. The exposure did not shrink your hand, it moved part of it into the open.
A 2 bam is discarded. It would give you a run of 1 bam, 2 bam, 3 bam.
Can you claim it?
Show the answer
No. There are no runs in this game at all.
You may claim a discard to make a pung, kong, quint or sextet, or to declare mahjong. Never to make a run.
Groupings are built from identical tiles. Three different tiles in sequence is not a grouping, so there is nothing to claim for.
If you have played any other mahjong, this is the habit that takes longest to lose. The tiles look like they want to be a run and they never are.
The player on your left exposes this, then discards.
What can you say for certain about the 4 dots?
Show the answer
Three naturals are locked away, so at most one is still live.
The kong shows four tiles but one is a joker, so only three natural 4 dots are in it. Four exist, so exactly one 4 dot is unaccounted for.
You also know they have spent a joker, which is a real cost to them.
An exposure is the most reliable information on the table, because unlike a discard it tells you what somebody is building as well as what has left the supply.
The rules behind this chapter — the claim window and what makes an exposure legal — are on Playing & claiming, one printed page. Say where to send it and it is yours, along with the other three sheets and the starter guide.
Reading the card
The notation is a small language and it is completely learnable. None of this is judgement — every question below has one right answer printed on the card itself, or derivable from the dragon-to-suit pairing on its back.
The Charleston is over. This is what you are holding, and the card is in front of you.
Which section of the card do you look at first?
Show the answer
Like Numbers. You are holding the same number across all three suits.
Do not look for a hand. Look at what you are already holding and let that send you to a section.
Two 3 craks, two 3 bams, two 3 dots — six tiles, one number, all three suits, and pairs in every one. That is the shape Like Numbers is built out of.
The 7 crak, the 9 bam, the lone 1 dot and the two unrelated winds are scaffolding.
Sections stay broadly the same from year to year even though the individual hands do not, which is why this habit survives the annual reshuffle.
A line on the card is printed in two colours.
Which two suits does it want?
Show the answer
Whichever two you like. The colours say how many suits, never which.
Colours never name a suit. They tell you how many different suits the hand needs, and which ones you use is your choice, decided by whatever you were dealt.
One colour: the whole hand in a single suit, you pick. Two colours: two different suits. Tiles sharing a colour share a suit.
This one misconception costs more hands than any other card-reading mistake, because it makes readable lines look impossible. If the colours matched suits, half the card would be unplayable with the tiles you actually hold.
A line asks for a suit and its matching dragon. You have decided to play it in craks.
Which dragon do you need?
Show the answer
Red. Red goes with craks.
Each dragon belongs to a suit: red with craks, green with bams, white — soap — with dots. The pairing is printed on the back of the card and it is the only colour-to-suit link in the game.
You are already holding the pair of reds, which is why this line was worth looking at.
Commit the three pairings to memory before anything else. A whole category of lines becomes readable the moment you have them.
A line asks for a suit and an opposite dragon — one that does not belong to the suit you are playing.
Playing in bams, which dragons are opposite?
Show the answer
Red and soap. Green is the matching one, so it is the one that does not qualify.
Green goes with bams, so in a bam hand green is the matching dragon and the other two are the opposites.
You are holding a pair of soaps, which is one of the two that qualify.
Opposite is defined by the suit you chose, not by the tile. Soap is matching in a dot hand and opposite in a bam hand, and it is the same tile either way.
The line you are reading prints a 0.
What tile does that 0 mean, and what suit is it?
Show the answer
Soap — and as a zero it has no suit at all.
Same tile, two unrelated jobs. As a dragon, soap is the white one, so it belongs to the dot suit. As a zero it is suitless, and it counts as a number rather than as a dragon.
Which job it is doing is decided by the line on the card, never by the tile.
There is no such thing as a floating zero. Soap plays as 0 only where the card prints one — usually in year hands.
A section of the card is called Consecutive Run. You are holding 4, 5 and 6 of bams.
Are those three tiles the start of a consecutive run hand?
Show the answer
No. Consecutive means the groups ascend, not the tiles.
A consecutive run hand is several groupings of identical tiles, in the same suit, whose numbers happen to ascend — something like a pung of ones, a pair of twos, a kong of threes.
The numbers step up. The tiles inside each grouping are still identical to each other. A 4, a 5 and a 6 is three unrelated singles.
The name is the trap. People who have read the rules and know there is no chow still read "consecutive run" and reach for a run.
A line prints two numbers side by side with no space between them.
Is that asking for one tile or two?
Show the answer
Two. Tiles printed close together are still separate tiles.
Spacing on the card is typesetting, not meaning. Two digits printed tight against each other are two tiles, exactly as if there were a gap.
The same applies to the letters in NEWS and to the digits of a year: each character is one tile.
This is the single largest source of dead hands, because it produces a grouping that is one tile short and looks complete.
Two lines would fit your tiles. One is marked X, the other C, and the C line pays more.
What does taking the C line cost you, mechanically?
Show the answer
Every discard on the table. You may claim one only as the tile that wins outright.
X is exposed: you may claim discards to build groupings and show them as you go. C is concealed: the hand stays hidden and you may claim a discard only to declare mahjong.
So the C line has to be filled almost entirely from the wall. That is what the extra value is paying for.
Jokers still work normally on a concealed hand — the restriction is on claiming and showing, not on what may sit inside a group.
A line is printed entirely in one colour.
How many suits does it need, and can you choose which?
Show the answer
One suit, and yes — you choose.
One colour means the whole hand sits in a single suit, and which suit is your decision, made from whatever you happened to be dealt.
Dragons are the exception to the free choice: if the line wants a matching dragon, the suit you pick decides which dragon it has to be.
Single-colour lines are the ones worth checking first when your hand is lopsided, because a suit you are already deep in costs you nothing to commit to.
Late Charleston. This is what has survived.
Which section does this hand point at?
Show the answer
The evens section — a cluster of even numbers, mostly in one suit.
Let the rack send you. Four pairs of even bams is not an accident, and no other section is going to use them all.
The lone 2 crak and 4 dot are also even, which keeps a two-suit even line open as well.
Notice what you did not need: the card. You narrowed seventy hands to one section from the shape of your own tiles, and that is the habit worth drilling.
The rules behind this chapter — the notation, the colours, X and C — are on Reading the card, one printed page. Say where to send it and it is yours, along with the other three sheets and the starter guide.
The other half is waiting on a person
What to pass, what to throw, which of eight lines to commit to — those drills are written and they are not published, because judgement has no source to cite and we would rather hold them than guess. If you play this game seriously and would put your name to the answers, reply to any email from us.
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