|
|
A MahJong set consists of 144 tiles, which may be divided into suit tiles, honor tiles, and bonus tiles.
Suit tiles show a suit--either bamboos, characters, or circles--and a rank from 1 through 9. There are four identical tiles of each kind, for a total of 108 suit tiles (3 suits x 9 ranks x 4 tile of each kind). Bamboos are sometimes called bams, boos, or sticks; characters may be referred to as characks, cracks, or wan; and circles are also known as balls or dots. The 1's and 9's of each suit are referred to as "terminals," while the 2's through 8's are known as "simples."
Characters
|
Bamboos
|
Circles
|
 Back to Top
Honor tiles come in two categories, dragons and winds. There are three kinds of dragons--Red, Green, and White--and four kinds of winds--East, South, West, and North. Like suit tiles, each honor tile comes in identical sets of four, making a total of 28 honor tiles in a set.
Dragons
Red, Green, White
|
Winds
East, South, West, North
|
Back to Top
Bonus tiles consist of four flowers and four seasons, a total of eight tiles in all. On many sets each bonus tile is numbered from 1 through 4, though these numbers play no part in the game. Seasons are usually numbered in red (1-Spring, 2-Summer, 3-Autumn, 4-Winter) and flowers in green or blue (1-Plum, 2-Orchid, 3-Chrysanthemum, 4-Bamboo). For scoring purposes, bonus tiles relate to specific winds as follows: Those numbered with a 1 correspond to East; with a 2, to South; with a 3, to West; and with a 4, to North. Bonus tiles are not used in all forms of MahJong (but they are used at Yahoo!).
Seasons
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter
|
Flowers
Plum, Orchid, Chrysanthemum, Bamboo
|
Back to Top
Next: Setup
|
|
