Quick Reference & Printables

You've met the tiles, the deal, the Charleston, a turn and a winning hand across the earlier lessons. This page pulls the handy bits into one place: printable guides you can take to game night, a picture of what the tile groups look like, and a one-page glossary of the words you'll hear at the table.

Printables to take to the table

Free PDFs you can print and bring along. They're made from our own license-free content — no copyrighted card is reproduced.

The groups at a glance

Most winning hands are built from a few kinds of matching groups. A joker can stand in for a tile inside any group of three or more — never in a pair or a single.

Pair — 2 alike

Pung — 3 alike

Kong — 4 alike

Quint — 5 (joker helps)

Remember the three suits and the honor tiles you met earlier: Dots, Bams and Craks run 1–9; the Winds (East, South, West, North), the Dragons (Red, Green, White — the White one is nicknamed the “Soap”), the Flowers and the Jokers round out the 152-tile set.

Table words, in one place

Mah Jongg

The call you make on completing a full 14-tile hand that matches a line on the card — and the name of the game.

Charleston

The pre-play ritual of passing tiles in sets of three (right, across, left; optionally reversed). Jokers are never passed.

Pung / Kong

Three identical tiles / four identical tiles.

Quint / Sextet

Five / six identical tiles — only reachable with jokers, for hands that call for them.

Exposure

A completed group laid face up after you call a discard; once exposed it's committed.

Call (Take)

Claiming another player's discard to complete and expose a group, instead of drawing from the wall.

Redeem a joker

Swapping the real tile a joker stands for (from your hand) for a joker in an exposed group, on your turn.

Soap

The nickname for the White Dragon tile.

Wall game

A draw — the wall empties before anyone wins, so no one wins or pays.

Dead hand

A hand that can no longer legally win (wrong number of tiles, or an impossible exposure).

The specific winning hands live on your own official card, which is copyrighted and reissued each year — this course teaches the game, not the card. Ready for more? Browse the other courses or find a game near you.