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What do the letters on the NMJL card mean?

The letters stand for the tiles that are not numbers. F is a Flower; N, E, W and S are the four Winds; D is a Dragon. The zero is Soap (White Dragon), serving as a zero. How many times a symbol repeats tells you how many of that tile you need.

Answered by Prim. Last reviewed 2026-09-15.

Numbers are suit tiles, letters are everything else

The card is written in a shorthand of digits and letters. A digit is a numbered tile in one of the three suits, Bams, Craks or Dots, and its color tells you how the suits are grouped. A letter is a tile with no number on it. Learn five letters and one zero, and you can read any line on the card aloud.

F for Flower

F is a Flower. There are eight in a set and all eight are interchangeable, whatever pictures, seasons or numbers happen to be painted on your particular tiles. Those decorations mean nothing on the card. Flowers belong to no suit, so their color on the card never names one. Because eight exist, a group of five or six Flowers can be made entirely of real Flowers, which is true of no other tile.

N, E, W and S for the Winds

N, E, W and S are North, East, West and South, four of each in a set. They are written in that order because it spells a word you already know, but the order is a memory aid, not a rule; the Winds have no required sequence in your hand. Like Flowers, Winds belong to no suit.

When the four letters appear together, one of each, they are four different tiles and count as singles. A Joker can never stand in for one of them, and they cannot be called from a discard.

D for Dragon, and the zero

D is a Dragon. There are three kinds, four of each: Red, Green and Soap (White Dragon). Each Dragon is paired with a suit, Red with Craks, Green with Bams and Soap with Dots, so a D printed in the same color as a number group on its line is the Dragon that matches that group's suit. A D in a color no number group on the line wears is a Dragon that does not match, and a line that says Any Dragon means exactly that.

The zero is not a separate tile. It is Soap, doing a second job. Soap is the only tile that can stand for a zero, and it is always both at once, a White Dragon and a zero. When it serves as a zero it has no suit and may sit alongside any suit, but it can never be used as a zero inside a run of consecutive numbers. On the 2026 card this matters most in the year section, where the zero in 2026 is a Soap.

Counting the repeats

The number of times a symbol repeats is the number of tiles you need. One is a single, two a pair, three a pung, four a kong, five a quint. A Joker may fill in only where a group runs to three or more identical tiles, never in a single and never in a pair.