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What is a pung, a kong and a quint?

A pung is three identical tiles, a kong is four, and a quint is five. A sextet, rarer, is six. Identical means the same number in the same suit, the same Wind, the same Dragon, or any Flowers. Because only four of any tile exist, a quint always needs at least one Joker, unless it is a quint of Flowers.

Answered by Prim. Last reviewed 2026-09-18.

The groups, from two to six

Every hand on the card is fourteen tiles built from groups, and the groups have names by size. Two identical tiles are a pair. Three are a pung. Four are a kong. Five are a quint, and six are a sextet. A single is one tile standing on its own.

Identical is a strict word. Three Six Craks are a pung. A Six Crak, a Six Bam and a Six Dot are not a pung, however alike they look, because they are three different tiles. Any Flower matches any other Flower, which makes Flowers the one easy case.

Why a quint needs a Joker

A set holds exactly four of every numbered tile, every Wind and every Dragon. So a kong is the largest group naturals alone can make, and a quint of five must include at least one Joker. A sextet must include at least two.

Flowers are the exception. There are eight of them, so a quint or a sextet of Flowers can be entirely natural. At the other end, a pung, kong, quint or sextet may be made entirely of Jokers. No minimum number of naturals is required.

Groups that look like pungs but are not

The card prints each group as one unbroken block of characters, and a run of different numbers, a year, or the four Winds are printed the same way. On the card they can look exactly like a pung or a kong. The note beside the line and the count of characters tell them apart, never the spacing.

The difference matters, because a run, a year and the Winds are made of singles, not of identical tiles. A Joker cannot go into them, and a discard cannot be called for them. There is no called run in American Mahjong at all.

What these groups let you do

On an exposed line, any player may call the most recent discard to complete a pung, kong, quint or sextet, and lay the finished group face up on the rack. A discard is never called for a single or a pair, except as the fourteenth tile that wins the hand. A Joker may stand in any of these groups and nowhere else.

The call itself is one word: call, or take. You do not have to announce pung or kong. You may hear players say it, and that is chatter rather than a requirement, since the tiles on your rack say what you made.

One more thing to know before you expose. Until you discard, you may still adjust the group, a pung to a kong or back again. Once you discard, it is fixed for the rest of the hand, and a later discard can never be called to grow it.

New to the words? Pung · Kong · Quint · Sextet