50 Fun Facts About Mahjong

How many tiles are in a standard mahjong set?

That is 108 suited tiles, 28 honours and 8 bonus flowers and seasons; regional sets add or drop a few.

For how many players is mahjong designed?

Three-player versions usually drop a whole suit and are common in Japan, Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines.

How many tiles does each player hold in their hand during play?

A winning hand is 14 tiles, completed by a draw from the wall or by claiming a discard.

What does a standard winning hand consist of?

The pair is known as the eyes; special hands such as thirteen orphans break the pattern.

What was mahjong originally called in Chinese, a word still used in Cantonese and Hokkien?

The clacking of tiles during shuffling is said to sound like chattering sparrows.

To which Western card game family is mahjong most often compared?

To separate it from mahjong solitaire it is sometimes called mahjong rummy.

What are the three suits in mahjong?

Each is numbered 1 to 9 with four copies of every tile, for 108 suited tiles.

What usually appears on the 1 of bamboo tile instead of a single bamboo?

Traditionally it is a peacock or sparrow.

What Chinese character appears at the bottom of every tile in the characters suit?

That is why the suit is also called the myriads, cracks or numbers.

What are the two kinds of honours tiles?

Four winds and three dragons, four copies each, make 28 honours.

What are the three dragon colours?

The white dragon has a blue or black frame, or in some sets is completely blank.

How many honours tiles are in a set?

Seven different tiles with four copies each.

What are the two sets of bonus tiles called?

There is only one of each, so eight bonus tiles in all, and a drawn one is set aside and replaced.

How many bonus tiles are in a full set?

Unlike suits and honours, there is only one copy of each flower and season.

Which of the Four Gentlemen plants is traditionally linked to winter on the flower tiles?

Modern players tend to reassign them, putting the plum blossom in spring and bamboo in winter.

Which wind position is the first dealer?

Play then proceeds counter-clockwise, and each round is named for its prevailing wind.

How many rounds make up a match?

Each represents a prevailing wind, starting with East, and each has at least four hands.

How long is each player's section of the wall?

Four rows of 36 tiles make the square wall from which everyone draws.

How many dice does the dealer traditionally throw to decide where the wall is broken?

Some house rules use two dice with a double throw for extra randomness.

What is a pung?

A kong is four identical tiles and a chow is a run of three in one suit.

What is a chow?

Unlike a pung or kong, a chow can normally be claimed only from the player immediately before you.

From whose discard may a chow normally be claimed?

Pungs and kongs may be claimed from anyone's discard, and a winning tile from anyone too.

What is "robbing the kong"?

It is rare and high-scoring in Hong Kong mahjong.

In Hong Kong mahjong, what happens to the payout when the winner draws the winning tile from the wall?

Winning as dealer doubles it again, so the dealer is richly rewarded or punished.

Which of these is a Hong Kong limit hand?

Four concealed pungs, heavenly hand and earthly hand are others.

Which two Chinese places are the disputed birthplaces of mahjong?

The first guidebook, Yifan Shen's 1914 Illustrated Mahjong Guide, put its birth roughly thirty years earlier in Ningbo.

Mahjong is based on Chinese draw-and-discard card games played with what kind of deck?

The suits were cash, strings of cash and myriads of strings, each in nine ranks.

To roughly what date do the earliest surviving mahjong tile sets belong?

They were acquired in Fuzhou, Shanghai and Ningbo and had king tiles instead of flowers and the green dragon.

Which uprising's leaders shared titles with the early "king" tiles, possibly explaining their removal?

Hong Xiuquan styled himself Heavenly King and his subordinates were the east, south, west and north kings.

During which period was mahjong banned outright in China?

The 1949 gambling ban had already caused a decline; today it is a favourite pastime again.

Which American retailer sold the first mahjong sets in the United States from 1920?

Co-owner Ezra Fitch sent emissaries to Chinese villages to buy every set they could find, and sold 12,000 in all.

Whose 1920 Rules of Mah-Jongg, known as the "red book", introduced a simplified game to America?

He learned the game while living in China; many of his simplifications were dropped once the 1920s fad faded.

Which singer recorded the 1920s hit "Since Ma Is Playing Mah Jong"?

Mahjong nights in America often meant dressing up and decorating rooms in Chinese style.

In which year was the National Mah Jongg League formed in the United States?

Its first president, Viola L. Cecil, wrote the first American rulebook, Maajh, the same year.

How are the legal hands in American mahjong decided?

American mahjong also uses jokers, the Charleston and melds of five or more tiles, and drops the chow.

How many tiles are in a hand in Taiwanese mahjong?

It also allows several players to win from one discard and gives bonuses to repeat dealers.

Which four animals appear on the bonus tiles of Singaporean and Malaysian mahjong?

These variants also allow payouts midway through a game when a kong is made.

Which Chinese mahjong variant disallows chows and uses only the suited tiles?

Popular since the 2000s, play goes on until a loser is decided or the game is drawn, so it moves very quickly.

Which two features are unique highlights of Japanese mahjong?

Discards are also lined up in order in front of each player, and some 5 tiles are red for extra value.

Which country's navy developed the mahjong variant Pussers Bones, with winds Eddie, Sammy, Wally and Normie?

The names stand in for East, South, West and North.

How many licences did the Hong Kong government issue in 1956 to legalise mahjong "schools"?

The number matches the tiles in a set; the schools remain a leisure fixture for the city's elderly.

As of 2010, mahjong was the most popular table game in which country?

In 2008 it had about 7.6 million players there and 8,900 parlours turning over ¥300 billion.

Who created the original computer mahjong solitaire game on the PLATO system in 1981?

Activision's 1986 version, Shanghai, marketed it as a centuries-old Chinese game called the Turtle, a claim Lockard never made.

By what other name is mahjong solitaire known, after Activision's 1986 trademark?

Despite the tiles, its matching gameplay has nothing to do with real mahjong.

In which city was the first global mahjong tournament held in 2002?

Mai Hatsune of Japan became the first world champion, playing under the new Chinese official rules.

Which Chinese city hosted the World Mahjong Organization's first World Championship in 2007?

It drew 144 participants, neatly matching the number of tiles in a set; Utrecht hosted the next one in 2010.

Which distinctive American-mahjong tile-passing ritual may have been borrowed from card games like Hearts?

It is required before every hand, and players may not pass jokers during it.

In Taiwanese mahjong, collecting all eight of what brings an automatic win?

Japanese rule sets, by contrast, discourage the use of flowers and seasons altogether.

In which 2018 film does Rachel deliberately let her boyfriend's mother win a mahjong game?

The parlour scene is a key plot point about the nature of their relationship, and helped renew Western interest in the game.

Roughly how much did Japan's 8,900 mahjong parlours take in sales as of 2008?

Japan had around 7.6 million players at the time, making it the game's biggest market outside China.