Mahjong Mini

American Mahjong is not played to any winning hand you can make. Each year the National Mah Jongg League prints a card of about eighty specific hands, and yours has to be one of them, tile for tile. Those hands are grouped into sections, and the section is the idea behind them: 13579 is built from odd numbers, 369 from multiples of three, Winds and Dragons from no numbers at all.

Recognising the section at a glance is the first real skill in this game, and it is what turns a card from a wall of text into somewhere you can find things. Every hand here is a genuine one off this year's card, drawn as the fourteen tiles you would be holding.

You cannot lose. A wrong tap rules that section out and adds ten seconds, so the only thing at stake is the clock, and the only way to be fast is to know the card. If you see a joker in a hand, that is a quint: five of the same tile, and only four exist, so the fifth is always a joker.

Ready for a harder one? The Daily deals you thirteen tiles and asks which three to pass, the Daily Discard gives you one line and three tiles that can never fit it, One Tile Off hands you three called mahjongs that are not mahjongs, and Danger sits you at five tables where everyone else is already calling.