Mahjong Tile Joker

It's a wild tile that stands in for another tile.

In American mahjong, a joker can replace a tile inside a group of three or more. It cannot fill a pair or sit alone as a single. The rules at the table decide what this wildcard can do.

Why do mahjong joker rules vary?

Each mahjong variant sets its own limits for the wild tile.

Some Chinese and Southeast Asian variants use fewer jokers or limit what they can replace by suit, rank, honor tile (a wind or dragon), or flower. Special wild tiles called inner flowers appear in early sets and survive in Vietnamese mahjong, though most Chinese variants no longer use them.

Some of the earliest surviving sets date to the 1870s and already include special wild tiles. Their predecessors included suit-restricted jokers in older Chinese card games. In 20th-century America, mahjong became associated with Asian immigrant communities and Jewish American women. The Chinese term 百搭 (“hundred uses”) names a wildcard tile.