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Is the White Dragon really a zero?

Yes. Soap (White Dragon) is the one tile that can stand for a zero, and it is always both things at once: a Dragon, and the zero. When a hand uses it as a zero it has no suit, so it sits beside numbers of any suit. The one thing a Soap zero can never do is join a consecutive run.

Answered by Prim. Last reviewed 2026-09-20.

Both things are true

Soap is the White Dragon, named for its plain white face, which many sets frame like a bar of soap. It is also the only zero in the game. There is no numbered zero tile anywhere in the set, so whenever the card prints a zero, in a year or in a number group, the tile that fills it is a Soap. Players sometimes argue about which of the two it really is. It is both, and the line you are playing decides which job it is doing.

As a Dragon, the Soap pairs with Dots, just as Red pairs with Craks and Green with Bams. As a zero, it pairs with nothing.

A zero has no suit

When a Soap is serving as a zero it takes no suit, even when it is printed in the same color as the numbers around it. A year printed all in one color can have its numbers in Craks and its zero still a Soap. The color says the numbers share a suit; the zero is simply the zero.

This is where careful readers trip. Everywhere else on the card, a Dragon printed in a number group's color binds to that group's suit. The zero is the exception, because in that spot the tile is not acting as a Dragon at all.

Why the zero never joins a run

A consecutive run is a chain of numbers in order, and the note beside each run on the card tells you where it may begin. A Soap zero cannot be a link in that chain, not at the bottom and not anywhere else. The zero lives on the card in years and in number groups that print a zero, and nowhere else. If you find yourself counting a Soap as the step below a one, stop: that hand is not on the card.

Counting Soaps in play

There are four Soaps in the set, as there are four of every Dragon, and a Soap used as a zero is one of those four. When a hand needs more than one Soap, whether as zeros or as Dragons, every one of them comes from the same four tiles, and the ones already in the discards are gone for good. A Joker cannot stand in for a single zero or a pair of zeros either, since a Joker never fills a single or a pair.

On the 2026 card the zero is most visible in the year section, where the year itself is spelled with a Soap for its zero. The card changes every year. The Soap's double life does not.

New to the words? Soap (White Dragon) · White Dragon (Soap) · Year hand · Consecutive Run