Guide To Tiles
This document is a reference for what all the various tiles in tiles.md are, and how they are commonly used across variants.
Standard tiles
These tiles are the standard tiles used in Riichi and most variants. The suits, man, pin, and sou, are notated with their first letter. z stands for “jihai”, and indicates winds and dragons.
Note that 5z is a Riichi-style White Dragon, depicted as a blank tile. 0m, 0p, and 0s are red fives (which, in Riichi, give extra score). 1s is the Riichi-style design of the 1 of Bamboos, depicted as a peacock.
Variant tiles and spacers
0z is the more-common design of the White Dragon, featured in most Chinese sets. 8z is the variant most-often used in Malaysian and Singaporean sets.
9z is a Kansai-style shiro-pocchi. This is used in some parlour variants of Riichi. It is normally used as a White Dragon, but if a player declares Riichi and then draws the shiro-pocchi on a later turn, they instantly win and the shiro-pocchi is used as a joker.
00s is the more-common design of the 1s, depicted as a sparrow on a branch.
10m, 10p, and 10s are Ten tiles (as in, the number after 9). Apparently these are sold by some vendors, but we don’t know of any mahjong variant that seriously uses them. We’ve included them here anyway.
1x is a tile back. 2x through to 8x are transparent spaces used for formatting (useful in displaying the winning hand, for instance).
Flowers
1f through to 4f are flowers (specifically, the Four Gentlemen quartet), while 1g through to 4g are the Seasons quartet.
1a through to 4a are animal tiles common to Singaporean mahjong (in order, Cat, Rat, Chicken, and Centipede). Often, they are used as predator-prey pairs (Cat eats Rat, Chicken eats Centipede), but depending on playgroup, the significance of this can differ.
1k through to 4k are “king” tiles, while 1q through to 4q are “queen” tiles. These are treated as flowers in Vietnamese mahjong.
1y is a face tile. This is treated as a flower in Malaysian mahjong.
Jokers
1j is an American-style joker. Under NMJL rules, it can substitute for any tile in any Pung, Kong, Quint, or Sextet, but never in a single, pair, or set of singles (such as NEWS, 2025, or 123).
0j is a Vietnamese-style joker. It has no restrictions. (TODO: double-check this.) 20j is another Vietnamese variant of this. 10j and 2y are Chinese and Malaysian variants of this.
2j is a Vietnamese-style number joker. It substitute for any number tile of any manzu, souzu, or pinzu. 12j is another variant of this.
9j, 4j, 5j, 6j, 7j, and 8j are Vietnamese-style jokers. Respectively, they can substitute for any flower, dragon, wind, pinzu, souzu, or manzu tile.
10j is a variant of 0j.
12j is a variant of 2j.
3j is a Chinese-style honour joker. It can substitute for any honour tile.
14j, 15j, 17j, and 18j are variants of 4j, 5j, 7j, and 8j respectively.
19j, 37j, 46j, 147j, 258j, and 369j are number-restricted jokers that can substitute for any of the numbers on their face. 91j, 64j, 73j, and 852j are variants of 19j,46j, 37j, and 258j respectively. (Alternatively, these tiles’ codes tell you which tiles they can substitute for.)
789j, 456j, and 123j are also number-restricted jokers. These can substitute for large, medium, and small numbers respectively (or just see their codes to see which tiles they can substitute for).
11j and 22j can substitute for any odd and any even number respectively.
20j is a variant of 0j.
30j can substitute for any five or any honour.
31j can substitute for the middle tile of any sequence, or any honour.
32j and 33j respectively can substitute for any tile that isn’t/is already in one’s hand.
34j can substitute for any tile for which all four naturals are publicly visible, or for which no naturals are publicly visible.
2y is a variant of 0j.
Star tiles
These are tiles of a fourth “star” suit, as seen in four-suit mahjong variants. 10t is a ten. Note that the above number jokers, 2j and 12j, do not apply to these (unless you decide that they should).
Galaxy tiles
These are used in Galaxy Mahjong. Numbered blue tiles may be used as number-restricted jokers of that number. Blue wind and blue dragon tiles are used as wind and dragon jokers respectively. Galaxy Mahjong awards extra points for using jokers as their naturals.
Aka/Ao/Kin/Transparent
Many of the above natural tiles, now as red, dark-blue, and gold variants (for extra parlour riichi rules). Transparent tiles, starting with 4, are also included, to allow for setting tiles as any colour you like (see documentation.md). These also have dotted variations, starting with 5 instead.