Mahjong has its own language, and most of it gets learned by sitting at a table and quietly guessing. Here is the shortcut. Every term below is one you will actually hear on game night, with the plain-English version first.
The tiles
A standard American Mahjong set has 152 tiles. Three suits, plus honours, plus the two wild cards that make the American game its own thing.
- Bam (bamboo): the suit drawn as sticks. The One Bam is traditionally a bird rather than a single stick, which is why it turns up on so much Mahjong merch.
- Crak (character): the suit marked with Chinese numerals. Short for character.
- Dot (circle): the suit drawn as circles. Also called dots or balls depending on who taught you.
- Soap: the white dragon. It is often a blank or lightly outlined tile, and in year hands it stands in as the zero.
- Flowers: eight tiles that are not part of any suit. Many hands ask for them, and nobody has ever been sad to draw one.
- Jokers: eight wild tiles. They can stand in for a tile inside a group of three or more, and never for a single or a pair.
- Winds: North, East, West and South, four of each. You will hear them called NEWS when a hand wants all four.
- Dragons: red, green and white. The white one is the Soap.
The card
The card is the annual list of legal hands, published each spring by the National Mah Jongg League. It is the whole point of the American game: you are not building any old set, you are building one specific pattern printed on that card.
Every player has the same card, and it changes every year. That yearly reset is why even long-time players go quiet for a week each April.
The Charleston
The Charleston is the passing round before play starts. You hand three tiles to the right, three across, three to the left, and depending on the table you may do a second round back the other way.
It is the most American part of American Mahjong and the part new players find strangest. The short version: you are trying to get rid of what fits nothing while quietly not handing anybody else the tile they need.
Groups you will hear named
- Single: one tile. No joker allowed.
- Pair: two identical tiles. No joker allowed either, which is what makes pairs the shape you protect hardest.
- Pung: three identical tiles. A joker can fill in here.
- Kong: four identical tiles.
- Quint: five identical tiles, which always needs at least one joker, because only four of any tile exist.
Table talk during play
- Exposure: when you claim a discarded tile, you put the finished group face up on your rack for everyone to see. It is information you are giving away, so it is worth a moment's thought.
- Calling: taking somebody's discard to complete a group, or to win.
- Redeeming a joker: swapping the real tile for a joker sitting in somebody's exposure, which puts that joker back in your hand.
- Dead hand: a hand whose exposures no longer match anything on the card. You keep playing but you cannot win.
- Wall game: the tiles run out and nobody has declared. Nobody wins and nobody pays.
- Mahjong: the call you make when your fourteen tiles complete a line on the card. Say it out loud, then check before you turn anything over.
Where Mischief Mahj fits
None of the above changes when you add our deck. You still use your own tiles, your own card and the same rules. The 32 cards just interrupt the routine with a twist here and a dare there, which is usually where the laughing starts.
Ready for a little mischief?
The Mischief Mahj™ deck plays with any American Mahjong set. Same tiles, new fun.
