Illegal Exposures 2026

Greetings and salutations from your jurisprudent Bubbe, writing today about illegal exposures on the 2026 card.

There are a number of reasons why this is an important topic. First of all, you need to know what the specific illegal exposures are so you, yourself, don't make them. Second of all, they might help you defend by being able to identify an opponent's dead hand–in a separate article I'll talk about why you may or may not want to announce that situation, but you should still be able to identify it. Third of all, as you might remember from my descriptions of the three panels of the card, knowing which combinations are illegal will help you to remember the actual components of various hands. 

Let's first identify them. 

No single tile, meld of single units (e.g. NEWS, 2026, 369, 2468, etc.) or pair can be exposed. You can call the final tile for mah jongg, but not before that.

In addition, the following specific, unique melds do not appear on the 2026 card, so any such exposure would be illegal:

Kong of Flowers

Quint of Flowers

Quint of Dragons

Quint of Winds

I ordinarily don't need to talk about sextets at all, but there is of course only one legal sextet this year: Flowers.

The most significant finding about this is about the kongs of Flowers, because that has to do with how hands are made. Whenever you're playing a pung/kong hand, if it involves Flowers, those are going to be pungs. 

 

Also important is to recognize situations where a second or third exposure is illegal. You must figure out your own proper exposures so that you are making the hand you intend; it's also important to determine what your opponents are playing so that you can play defensively and/or call their hand dead if you so choose.

What double exposures are illegal? 

Pungs of Like Numbers: these only occur in concealed hands (E8, CR8, O8)

Winds of the same size as their non-partner: for instance, there are never exposures of the same number of Norths and Easts, or South and Wests. Per above, NEWS and/or pairs are not exposures!

A kong of dragons and a kong of numbers–also, there's only one very specific situation where a pung of dragons and a pung of numbers can be exposed: Y1, with a pung of 2s and a pong of soaps (000). O9 is a concealed hand.

One way to remember this is that except for Y1, number and dragon exposures are an either/or situation: exposures can either be kongs of numbers and pungs of dragons, or pungs of numbers and kongs of dragons, but never both the same size. Even Q3 follows this rule: two quints of numbers and a kong of dragons!!

Pungs of Winds only appear with kongs of like numbers; kongs of Winds don't appear with exposures of numbers.

Sextets of flowers only occur with two number kongs.

As I mentioned, the more you know about the rules of this year's card, the easier it is to remember certain hands. All hands have to use 14 tiles.

I’ll reiterate: 

*there are never four Flowers

*The only quints are numbers 

*The only sextets are Flowers

*Exposed Wind “partners” are the same size 

*Except for Y1, you never expose melds of numbers and dragons of the same size

*Never expose pungs of like numbers

If you have any questions or comments (and I figure some of you will!) you can email me at Bubbefischer@gmail.com.

More articles to follow! Talk to you soon! 

Bubbe