I think the inspector is playing American Mah-jongg, where 8 jokers are added to the 144 Chinese tiles.
This rule enables sextets, six of the same tile including jokers. Actually, the inspector has drawn a total of 12 tiles among dot 1, dot 2 and jokers.
This tournament is hosted in the United States of America.
Three Tiles Pattern - a Mahjong Prank
- Details
- Written by Vitaly Novikov
Dear readers, today’s item is a para-mahjong Sherlock Holmes joke. Don’t try too hard to solve it!
“What the hell is going on here?” – these are the exact words of Inspector Lestrade, sitting at some mahjong tournament and recalculating his tiles.
“1, 2, 3, .., 12, 13, again 13! I would understand it if I have three tiles patterns in 12 but NOT in 13 tiles!”
The matter is his hand is:
.
So, something definitely went wrong. Nevertheless, this happens at official tournament.
Question 1: Please, explain what has happened. What are Rules set of the official tournament?
Question 2: What country is hosting such a tournament?
Comments (2)
1Thursday, 28 June 2012 10:45
Quentin
2Thursday, 28 June 2012 20:18
Vitaly
Quentin, thank you for your answer!
When this miniature was firstly written with text "three tiles patterns" there was a solution (beside official one) with Jokers -- somewhat like presented above.
To avoid that solution miniature was rewritten with placing exact tiles in hand.
So, let's search further (but don't be too serious!).
Nevertheless, thanks again!
When this miniature was firstly written with text "three tiles patterns" there was a solution (beside official one) with Jokers -- somewhat like presented above.
To avoid that solution miniature was rewritten with placing exact tiles in hand.
So, let's search further (but don't be too serious!).
Nevertheless, thanks again!
It is difficult to judge the difficulty of problems, but some did take me some time to solve.
I especially enjoyed the '32nd of December' and its fourth question.
Thanks to Vitaly for the problems, to Martin for hosting the "venue" and congrats to Sylvain and Scott for their success.
A: two kongs of the same suit (i.e. 8 one-suit tiles) and a kong of wind
So... winds are now suit tiles?
And they are in every suit?
Wow!
Looks like I've misunderstood the question and it was actually an easy one!
Was it because I was the only one to answer the question within the allotted time?
Just curious.
Thanks.
At first, it looks like each player had three pure melded kongs, two of them separated by two numbers (e.g. 1 and 4), and that their left-side neighbour is waiting for these two said kongs with a ryanmen (e.g. _23_).
But it turns out there are not enough tiles for that.
So, here's the trick:
Watson had: melded: 1111m 4444m 5555m, concealed: 23s EE.
Lestrade had: melded: 1111s 4444s 5555s, concealed: 23p SS.
Holmes had: melded: 1111p 4444p 5555p, concealed: 78m WW.
Mrs. Hudson had: melded: 6666m 9999m, concealed: RRRR(concealed kong) 23m NN, and erronously melded as flowers: 2223m.
It certainly "cut off all conceivable scenarios".