Glossary

American mahjong has its own vocabulary, and several words mean something different here than they do in Asian variants. Start typing to filter — most terms below are the ones beginners hear at the table without explanation.

Bam: Short for bamboo, one of the three suits. The 1 Bam is the bird tile. Always plural in speech: “I need two bams.”
Crak: Also: crack, characterOne of the three suits, marked with a numeral above and the character for ten thousand below.
Charleston: The signature mechanicThe mandatory opening exchange: three tiles right, three across, three left, all passed simultaneously.
Concealed hand: Marked “C” on the cardA hand that may not use any exposures. Every tile must come off the wall. These print at higher values.
Courtesy pass: An optional exchange of up to three tiles between opposite players after the Charleston. Either player may decline.
Dead hand: A hand that can no longer win — usually because of an illegal call, a wrong exposure, or a misdeclared Mah Jongg. You sit out the rest of the hand.
Exposure: A completed group placed face up on top of your rack after calling a discard. Exposures are public information and remove tiles from play.
Flower: One of eight interchangeable flower tiles. In American mahjong flowers are ordinary tiles used inside hands, not bonuses drawn and replaced.
Joker: One of eight wild tiles. Usable only inside groups of three or more, never for a single or a pair, and never passed in the Charleston.
Kong: Four identical tiles. Because the set holds only four of each, a kong can be built without a joker.
Mah Jongg: Also: mahj, mahjongThe declaration made when your fourteen tiles match a card line exactly. Also the name of the completed hand.
NEWS: Card shorthand for one each of North, East, West and South. Sometimes printed as a single group; sometimes the winds are split across groups.
Pung: Three identical tiles. The basic building block of most hands on the card.
Quint: Five of a kind. Since only four copies of each tile exist, a quint always requires at least one joker.
Rack: The standing frame that holds your tiles upright, facing you. Exposed groups sit on the top ledge. Racks are why American players never hold tiles in hand.
Sextet: Six identical tiles — four naturals plus two jokers, or the like. Appears in the harder high-value hands.
Single: A lone tile required by a hand, rather than part of a group. A joker can never substitute for a single.
Soap: Also: white dragonThe blank white dragon tile. Written as 0 in card notation. The nickname is universal in American play.
Wall: The four stacks of face-down tiles forming a square in the middle of the table. Each player builds nineteen stacks, two tiles high.
Wall game: Also: a drawA hand in which the wall runs out before anyone declares. Nobody pays; the tiles are shuffled and redealt.
Year hand: A hand built around the digits of the current calendar year. The only section of the card rewritten completely every year.

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