Jet-Lagged Mahjong Epiphanies: When Tile Logic Hits at 2:43 AM

“For those who sleep peacefully through the night… this post may not be for you.”

Transatlantic flights can be brutal on the body. As I lay there bleary eyed and headachy earlier this week, I reached over and picked up my phone to check the time. 2:43 am. Yuck. I started mindlessly scrolling when a voice in my head started berating me – horrible, this is HORRIBLE – at least do something constructive! And that’s how I decided to open THE BOOK (pdf version) on my drive.

Oh my god.

Game changer.

I started running down the page with all the hands listed in words. Mind you, I’ve done this before. But the jet lagged brain, I have realized, has a murky clarity to it that is quite a unique wonder (catch the pun?)

And so here’s how a gnarly trio of pairs un-gnarled itself, in my jet-lag induced, hallucinatory haze:

• Heavenly Twins
• Seven Twins
• All Pairs

How my sleepy brain finally untangled the twins 👯‍♀️

1. We are talking twins/pairs so obviously it’s got to do with tiles in twos. These three hands all entail seven sets of two tiles each.
   Remember, each pair, regardless of which hand we are referring to, has to have two tiles that look exactly the same.
2. ‘Heavenly’ in Mahjong hand names is, it turns out, most often associated with the fortuitous coming together of one suit, like stars in the sky.
   Hence, Heavenly Pairs is a hand that contains only one suit:
   seven pairs of tiles, all belonging to one suit.
   For example, if you got a bunch of Craks, and doubles within that (like two 6 Craks), you could proceed towards make a hand of pairs all in Craks; 2-Craks, 6-Craks, 9-Craks and so on – a heavenly pair indeed.
3. ‘All Pairs‘ and ‘Seven Pairs’, by virtue of not being ‘heavenly’, therefore, cannot be all in one suit.
   They are not like stars in the heavens, the unlucky sods.
   By process of elimination then, these two have more going on than simply pairs in one suit.
4. How to distinguish between the two?
   Well, if you birthed seven sets of twins, would they all look like they were from the same suit?
   Most certainly not.
   So, Seven Pairs are pairs of same number tiles but across suits and honors – a pair of 2-Boos, a pair of 6-Dots, a pair of 8-Craks, a pair of Green Dragons and so on.
   Just like those sets of twins God gave some really exhausted mum — they look nothing like each other!
5. And that leaves us with All Pairs – which aspires to be heavenly, because it’s ALL in the same suit, but doesn’t make it to heaven, because it allows for honor pairs.
   So like Heavenly Twins in the suit department, but with Wind and Dragon pairs thrown in.
   Which is nice – kinda like having good-looking Greek Gods around to enjoy looking at, but disruptive to one-god, one-suit, one-heaven theology.

(PS: Not to forget, there’s also the All Pair Honors, a special kind of all pairs, of just honours tiles – winds, dragons and those infamous 1s and 9s – the eldest and youngest child always have an honourable place in each family don’t they?)

That’s my two bits on the three ‘pairs’ suits for now. Let’s hope jet lag leads to many such AHA moments, while it lasts.

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Jet-Lag Cheat Sheet

🀄Swipe for cozy Mahjong chaos ➜

Next long-haul flight, I’m bringing tiles. 🧳🀄