Illegal Exposures 2024

 

Greetings and salutations from your law-abiding Bubbe, here to give you information on illegal exposures on the 2024 card!

 

As you know, there are certain melds of tiles, and combinations of melds, that do not appear on each year's card. The sooner you know them, the sooner you'll be able to call out someone’s hand that exposes them. Most importantly, you'll know not to make that mistake, yourself. It’s also helpful to remember “illegal” melds because, when you're trying to remember the components of a hand, it’s great to know what can NEVER be used. 

 

FLOWERS

 

This year, you can only expect to “see” four or five flowers--a kong or a quint. Many hands use a pair of Flowers, but of course those would not be called for exposure. There are no hands on the card that use single or pung Flowers.

 

Quint Flowers can be exposed with two pungs of like numbers of 4 or higher; or with a kong of dragons, or a quint of a number.

 

Kong Flowers can be exposed with a pung of dragons, a kong of dragons, or both; or a kong or pung of any number.

 

There are no hands this year involving an exposure of Flowers with Winds. That’s not to say that a Winds hand won’t need a pair, but it will never use a kong or quint.

 

WINDS:

 

It is possible to see pungs or kongs of any Wind. There are no quints of Winds. There are hands on the 2024 card that use a pair of Norths, usually with a pair of Souths, but surprisingly there is no hand that uses a pair of Easts or Wests. There are several times that there are single East and West, and even single North and South in the case of the "NEWS" hands (W7 and LN3).

 

In general, there are always an equal number of North and South, or East and West. The only exceptions are Q2, which uses one Wind kong (your choice); and WD4, which has four Souths but only two Norths.

 

As mentioned, above, you will never see Wind and Flower exposures together. You will also never see Wind and dragon exposures together. As for specifics on each type of Wind meld, you will never “see” a combination of a Wind pung exposure with anything but other Winds, or a kong of numbers (W3). Wind kongs will only be exposed with a quint of numbers (Q2) or pungs or kongs of other Winds (W1a, W1b, W4, W5a, W5b).

 

DRAGONS:

 

Both pungs and kongs of dragons can be exposed on this year's card. There are no hands that use a quint of dragons. As for other dragon melds that appear on the card, there is only one (concealed) hand that uses any pair of dragons: SP 5. Unlike last year, there's no hand that uses the single dragon except, of course, a *single Soap* when you're making a year meld; of course, that cannot be called for exposure until the final mah jongg tile.

 

A pung of dragons can be exposed with a kong or pung of another dragon; a kong of any number; a pung of 3’s, 7’s, or 9’s; or a kong of Flowers. Only a pung of white dragons/Soaps can be exposed with a pung of 2's. There are no hands that use dragon pungs with any kind of Quints.

 

A kong of dragons can be exposed with a pung or kong of another dragon; a quint of any number; a kong of 2’s (Soaps only); a pung of any number except 1's; or a quint or kong of Flowers.

 

 

NUMBER TILES:

 

You may see a pung, Kong, or quint exposure of any number tile. The tricky part comes in when you have multiple exposures.

 You may see quints of the same number exposed in two different suits (Q3), two quints of the same suit that are separated by a number (N and N+2) (Q1), or two quints of different suits that are not the same number (Q2).

You will not see a number quint exposed with any other size of number meld except another number quint. There may be pairs, but these would not be exposed. 

You may see a quint of numbers exposed with a quint of Flowers, a kong of Winds, or a kong of dragons in a different suit only.

 

Kongs of a number may be exposed with another number pung or kong. For cross reference with other dual exposures, please review the groups above.

 

Tomorrow we're going to talk about ambiguous exposures. Those are times that, from just two exposures, you can't really guess which hand the person is playing. These are also really helpful to remember for switching hands, so I recommend that you pay close attention. There will be a quiz!!!

 

See you tomorrow!

 

Bubbe