Word Mahjong
文字麻将
Every tile is one Chinese character. Draw, discard, and go out when your 14 tiles read as a sentence.
- 2–6 players
- about 30 min
- Easy to pick up
- Word & clue
- Party
- Silly
The goal
Be the first to make a sentence out of all 14 tiles in your hand.
How it plays
- 1There are 144 tiles, each with one character. Shuffle and take tiles as in mahjong: 13 each, with the dealer taking a 14th and discarding first.
- 2On your turn draw a tile, then discard one. Instead of drawing you may take the tile the player before you just discarded; you don't have to show what you use it with.
- 3You may pung, as in mahjong. There are no kongs, and a chow may only be taken from the player before you.
- 4This is the rulebook's main way to play. It also has lighter ones, such as fortune-telling and a karaoke game, where you tell a story from key words; see the rulebook for those.
How you win
Whoever can read all 14 of their tiles as a sentence goes out and wins. It may be one sentence or several, and the player going out decides where the breaks fall. The house keeps no score: it is played for the fun of it.
First time?
- Hold on to the small words that fit anywhere; they are what joins a sentence up at the end.
- Read your sentence out loud when you go out. It's the best part of the game.