Three Tiles Pattern: the Solution
- Details
- Written by Vitaly Novikov
Do not waste too much time in trying to find the answer to my ‘para mahjong’ Sherlock Holmes mystery, I warned last week. Yet, some of you tried hard to solve it. Here’s the answer.
During some mahjong tournament, Inspector Lestrade has got a hand with only three tiles patterns in 13 tiles:
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Question 1: Please, explain what has happened. What is the rules set of the official tournament?
Question 2: What country hosts such a tournament?
Answer. To gain experience in catching Yakuza, Inspector Lestrade was sent to Holland to play Washizu mahjong – a kind of Japanese mahjong which is popular amongst Japanese mobsters. Mahjong sets were ’Washizu extended’, where there are up to 6 tiles of the same pattern in order to play with various level of transparency – from 1 to 3 transparent tiles of 4.
Mahjong sets for the tournament were prepared by Dutch police officers who did not play mahjong. They had received very clear instructions: “Count exactly 136 tiles from each set and place them at the table.”
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".