Mahjong Handle

About Mahjong Handle

Mahjong Handle takes the Wordle formula and swaps letters for mahjong tiles. The answer is a 14-tile winning hand from riichi mahjong, and the game tells you the round wind, the seat wind and whether the hand was won by ron or tsumo, since those affect which yaku are possible.

You build each guess from an on-screen keyboard of characters, circles, bamboo, winds and dragons. Guesses must be complete winning hands with at least one yaku, with the tiles sorted by number and suit, except the final tile, which is the winning tile and sits in its own column. After each guess, the tiles change colour to show whether each one is in the hand and in the right spot, in the hand but in another spot, or not in the hand at all.

Everyone gets the same hand on the same day: the game counts the days since 2 February 2022 and picks the matching hand from its list. It credits Wordle as its inspiration and was published as open source.

It suits riichi players who know their yaku and want a daily test of hand shapes, and it is a fair challenge for learners who want to practise reading waits.

How to play Mahjong Handle

1. Open Mahjong Handle and note the round wind, seat wind and whether the win is ron or tsumo.
2. Build a complete winning hand of 14 tiles with the tile keyboard; the last tile is the winning tile.
3. Make sure your hand has at least one yaku, then press Enter.
4. Read the colours: they mark tiles in the right spot, tiles in the hand but elsewhere, and tiles not in the hand.
5. Find the exact hand within six guesses.

Tips

• Use the winds shown: a matching wind triplet can be a yaku on its own.
• Start with a simple, open-ended hand such as tanyao to test many middle tiles.
• Remember that tiles are sorted, so a tile in the right spot also fixes the order of its neighbours.
• The winning tile column is separate, so think about which wait the hand was completed on.

Questions