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Can I pass Flowers in the Charleston?

Yes. A Flower may be passed on any pass of the Charleston, the courtesy pass included. The only tile the rules forbid you to pass is a Joker. Allowed is not the same as wise, though: Flowers fit a great many hands, so most players keep them unless the hand they are building has no use for one.

Answered by Prim. Last reviewed 2026-10-22.

The rule is short

Every required pass of the Charleston is three tiles, face down, all four players at once. Any tile in your hand may be one of the three, with a single exception: a Joker may never be passed. A Joker slipped into a pass is handed back, and you still owe three, so another tile goes in its place.

Flowers are not Jokers, whatever their popularity suggests. They may go right, across or left in the first Charleston, in any direction in the second, and across in the courtesy pass. No player may refuse one, and nobody need explain sending one.

Why players hesitate

A set holds eight Flowers, and all eight are the same tile for every purpose on the card. The pictures, numbers and seasons painted on them mean nothing. That makes them unusually plentiful, and plenty is useful: because eight exist, a pung, a kong, even a quint or sextet of Flowers can be built entirely of the real thing, which no number, Wind or Dragon can manage past four.

Flowers also turn up across the card, in many sections and many lines. On the 2026 card, the only two lines that ask for six of a kind ask for six Flowers. A tile with that many homes is a tile worth a second look before it leaves your rack.

When passing one is the right call

Holding Flowers is advice, not law. If the hands you are weighing take no Flower at all, a Flower is simply a tile you do not need, and sending it on is perfectly correct. Better a Flower than a tile that finishes your own pair.

Do mind what a generous pass gives away. Two or three Flowers in one pass, like two of a kind of anything, hands a neighbor the start of a set. If you must part with Flowers, part with them one at a time, across different passes, and the table learns less about you.

If your hand is stuck

Sometimes every tile matters and you cannot spare three. On the last pass of either Charleston you may blind pass: take one, two or three of the tiles arriving and send them straight on, unseen. That is the proper escape. Trying to slip a Joker into the pass is not, and keeping a Flower you will never use merely to avoid choosing is not much better.

New to the words? Flower · Charleston · Joker · Blind pass