Missing sources

Proto-mahjong 14

• Collection American Museum of Natural History, anthropology catalogue 1/2377: the Glover set — The museum's own record of one of the two surviving 1870s sets, with Glover's 1875 cover note (accession 1869-90-19).
  Where: https://anthro.amnh.org/collections. Tried: The old catalogue address now redirects to the division homepage, in a browser too (2026-09-25). The new collections database redirects to a system-maintenance page.
• Collection Brooklyn Museum 28.779 (and 09.943): the other Glover set — The catalogue record and photographs of the set Culin described in 1893.
  Where: https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/search?q=28.779. Tried: Automated requests get a 429 from a security checkpoint; a browser save of the search page came back empty (2026-09-25).
• Collection British Museum 1896,0501.904: Wilkinson's 1889 Ningbo set — The record and photographs of the 140-piece 中發 set that marks the end of the proto stage.
  Where: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/search?keyword=1896,0501.904. Tried: The object address tried first (A_1896-0501-904) is "Page not found" in a browser, so that address is wrong; the museum's own search is needed to find the record.
• Historical Fan Zengxiang 樊增祥, 《樊山續集》 (1902) — Says 撮麻雀 'arose in Ningbo twenty years ago': the earliest dated Chinese statement of the Ningbo origin, known here only as quoted.
  Where: https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&res=319688. Tried: ctext asks automated readers not to scrape. A browser save of the book's contents page (2026-09-25) confirms the OCR edition is there, but the passage is inside one of its chapters, not yet located.
• Journalism Shen Bao 申報, 18 February 1884 and 12 November 1887 — The first newspaper use of 麻雀 for the game, and the Shanghai concession police's ban on cha mo ziang and peng hu.
  Where: The Shen Bao database (library subscription). Tried: Not freely online.
• Historical Zhang Deyi 張德彝, 《航海述奇·五述奇》, entry for Guangxu 15/1/29 (1889) — A traveller's diary listing a tile set 'named 麻雀, also 馬將', with the kings and suit jokers as optional extras.
  Where: Print: the 走向世界叢書 edition (岳麓書社). Tried: Not on Wikisource or the Internet Archive.
• Historical Du Yaquan 杜亞泉, 《博史》 (1933) — Puts the game among Fujian and Guangdong seafarers before it reached Ningbo.
  Where: Print; possibly in Republican-era book databases. Tried: Not found online.
• Journalism Chen Ailu 陳艾廬, 《麻雀牌考補》, in 紅玫瑰 (1925) — The first Chinese text naming Chen Yumen as the inventor.
  Where: Shanghai Library's Republican periodicals database. Tried: Not found online.
• Historical Wilkinson, W. H., "Mah-Jongg: A Memorandum" (1925), marked "Not for Publication" — The only description of the c. 1890 chung fa rules, quoted by Stanwick.
  Where: Library copies listed in WorldCat. Tried: Print only.
• Scholarship Depaulis, Thierry, "Embarrassing Tiles: Mahjong and the Taipings", The Playing-Card 35 (3), 2007 — The Taiping hypothesis for the king tiles, in full.
  Where: The International Playing-Card Society's journal archive, or a library. Tried: Not online.
• Scholarship Lo, Andrew, "China's Passion for Pai", in Asian Games: The Art of Contest, Asia Society, 2004 — A historian's account of peng hu, the Sheng set and the late-Qing names.
  Where: Print (exhibition catalogue). Tried: Print only.
• Scholarship Ebashi Takashi 江橋崇, "Proto Mahjong: Mahjong tiles in the 19th century", Mahjong Museum Report 9-11, 2005 — The print version of Ebashi's study, possibly fuller than the online one.
  Where: Print, from the Mahjong Museum (Chiba). Tried: Print only.
• Scholarship Zhou H. X. and Wang Y. L., "The Origin and Development of Mahjong", Journal of Ningbo University 2002 (4) — Ningbo scholarship on the origin.
  Where: CNKI (subscription). Tried: Not freely online.
• Organisation Ningbo Display Hall of the Birthplace of Mahjong, The History and Culture of Mahjong (booklet) — The Ningbo institution's own account, including Chen Yumen's biography.
  Where: Sold at the hall; partly translated by Sloper. Tried: Print only.

Chinese classical 7

• Historical 沈一帆 (Shen Yifan). 《繪圖麻雀牌譜》, first edition, 1914 — The first Chinese mahjong manual. The 1924 Shanghai edition read earlier may differ from it, in particular on the settlement among the losers and the 'recent new method'
  Where: National Library of China or Shanghai Library; Republican-era book databases. Tried: 2026-10-11: a Commons search (index.php) found only the 1924 NLC scan; IA title searches for 麻雀 and 牌譜 found no Chinese manual
• Historical Hartman, Lee Foster. Standardized Mah Jong: A Manual of Tactics for Mixed Hands, Cleared Hands and One-Double Games, including the American Code of Laws. New York: Harper, 1924 — One of the early English books on how the American game related to the Chinese one, and it prints the 1924 American Code
  Where: HathiTrust or US libraries. Tried: 2026-10-11: IA advanced search by title and creator found no copy; IA full-text search found only reviews and adverts (Saturday Review 4 October 1924, Harper's November 1924, Publishers Weekly 30 August 1924). HathiTrust full-text search is behind the site's Cloudflare challenge
• Official rules Standardization Committee. 'An American Code of Laws for Mah Jong.' Auction Bridge and Mah Jong Magazine, July 1924; reprinted in Hartman 1924 and Work 1924 — The 1924 American Code: it shows which features of the Chinese game the standard American game kept or dropped
  Where: Auction Bridge and Mah Jong Magazine, July 1924; library copies of Hartman or Work. Tried: 2026-10-11: IA full-text search found a Printers' Ink notice of 26 June 1924 and newspaper adverts, but not the text
• Historical Racster, Olga. How to Play Mah-Jongg in the Chinese Manner (Mah-Jongg). London, 1924 — Sloperama FAQ 11f cites her for the Shanghai base of 20 against Hong Kong's 10. A British account of the Chinese game during the craze
  Where: British Library; UK libraries. Tried: 2026-10-11: IA advanced search for creator Racster found only her music and ballet books; IA full-text search found only listings (Publishers Weekly 16 February 1924, German trade lists of 1925)
• Rulebook Whitney, Eleanor Noss. A Mah Jong Handbook: How to Play, Score, and Win the Modern Game. Tokyo: Tuttle, 1964 — A standard later rulebook that describes the classical Chinese game alongside the Western one
  Where: Internet Archive lending library (mahjonghandbookh00whit, and the 2001 and 2007 printings). Tried: 2026-10-11: IA metadata marks it access-restricted and its OCR text private (the Archive's own lending restriction)
• Rulebook Lo, Amy. The Book of Mahjong: An Illustrated Guide. Boston: Tuttle, 2001 — Depaulis and Tsui use it as their modern reference column, and its account of the old Chinese game would test the 136 count
  Where: Internet Archive lending library (bookofmahjongill00loam). Tried: 2026-10-11: IA metadata marks it access-restricted (the Archive's own lending restriction)
• Scholarship Heinz, Annelise. Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021 — A historian's account of the game's export from Shanghai in the 1920s, bearing on the chart's date
  Where: Oxford University Press; libraries. Tried: 2026-10-11: IA advanced search found only a 2021 Yiddish Book Center video interview with the author (nybc-ybcr-1007), not the book

Shanghai / Hong Kong new style 6

• Rulebook Lo, Amy. The Book of Mah Jong: An Illustrated Guide. Tuttle, 2001. ISBN 0804833028. Chapter 5, 'The Shanghai Game' — The Archive's full-text index shows chapter 5 opening 'The Shanghai Game, also known as the New...' and a section 'Computing the Fans (the Shanghai Game)'. Depaulis and Tsui's Shanghai New Style column and Kwan's remark on additive 新章 scoring both cite Lo. It may be the source of the fan-scored 'Shanghai new style' description
  Where: https://archive.org/details/bookofmahjongill00loam (lending library), or any library copy. Tried: 2026-10-11: the djvu text answered 401 because the item is access-restricted by the Archive. Only search snippets were seen
• Rulebook Perlmen, Samuel K. and Mark Kai-Chi Chan. The Chinese Game of Mahjong. Hong Kong: Book Marketing Ltd., 1979. ISBN 962-211-0169 — Describes Old Style and New Style as played in Hong Kong. It is the basis of Depaulis and Tsui's 1950-60 'Shanghai New Style' column and of one of the wiki's HKOS scoring tabs, so it should show what Hong Kong players called new style and when
  Where: Hong Kong and university libraries; second-hand dealers. Tried: 2026-10-11: Internet Archive advanced search by title and author found nothing; HathiTrust's catalog met a Cloudflare challenge
• Rulebook Pritchard, D. Brine. Mahjong (Teach Yourself). Hodder Headline, 2001; also Play and Win Mah-Jong, 2013 — The Archive's full-text index shows a passage on 'the so-called New Style game', which 'abandons the free hands of the old game in favour' of patterns. It would give an outside definition of the new style, perhaps with dates
  Where: https://archive.org/details/mahjong00prit and https://archive.org/details/playwinmahjong0000prit (lending library). Tried: 2026-10-11: the djvu text answered 500 and the item is access-restricted by the Archive. Only search snippets were seen
• Rulebook 簡而清 (Kan Yi-ching). 《開檯》. 香港：博益出版集團, 1986 — Kwan and Chinese Wikipedia both cite it for the history of 舊章, 清章 and 新章 in Hong Kong, including 六獨 (ch. 2 sec. 3). It is the Chinese-language source for when 新章 arose
  Where: Hong Kong Public Libraries; second-hand bookshops in Hong Kong. Tried: 2026-10-11: Internet Archive search by title and author found nothing; not otherwise online
• Journalism 申報 (Shen Bao), Shanghai, 1920s-1930s: articles and columns on mahjong rules (新麻將, new methods of scoring) — Only the Shanghai press of the time can show whether a reformed or pattern-heavy Shanghai game existed in the 1920s and what it was called
  Where: Shanghai Library's 全國報刊索引 and the 申報 full-text databases (subscription); Chinese university libraries. Tried: 2026-10-11: no open access. Web searches in Chinese for 申報 with 麻將 rules returned nothing relevant
• Historical Pai Hsien-yung (白先勇). Wandering in the Garden, Waking from a Dream: Tales of Taipei Characters. Indiana University Press, 1982 (translation of 《台北人》, 1965-71) — The Archive's full-text index shows a footnote: 'In the "New Mah-jong," Shanghai-style, the winning hands were given var[ious]...'. That suggests Shanghai émigrés knew a 'new mahjong' with named, valued hands, and the Chinese original may give its name
  Where: https://archive.org/details/wanderingingarde0000baix (lending library); the Chinese original in any edition of 《台北人》. Tried: 2026-10-11: the item is access-restricted by the Archive. Web searches for 新麻將 with 白先勇 or 永遠的尹雪艷 found nothing

Hong Kong old style 11

• Law Legislative Council of Hong Kong, Official Report of Proceedings, 19 August 1959 — A search hit for 'mahjong' in a 1959 sitting, most likely on parlour licensing. It would date the licensing from a primary record.
  Where: https://www.legco.gov.hk/1959/h590819.pdf. Tried: The server's certificate chain fails verification through this environment's proxy, and a second fetcher got 503 (2026-09-28). Retried on 2026-10-12: the certificate chain still fails verification through this environment's proxy (our side).
• Law Hong Kong Government Gazette, 1956: the notice or regulation introducing mahjong parlour licences — The primary record behind the '1956, 144 licences' that the encyclopedias repeat without a source.
  Where: The Government Gazette archive (Hong Kong Government Reports Online, HKU Libraries). Tried: HKU's Government Reports Online was tried on 2026-10-12, and the tunnel through this environment's proxy closed mid-exchange twice (our side), so a reader on another network may reach it.
• Journalism South China Morning Post, "Mahjong exhibition reveals gambling industry that once dominated Hong Kong" (2016) — The press report that gives 1956 and 144 licences, apparently from an exhibition; may name its source.
  Where: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education-community/article/1949231/mahjong-exhibition-reveals-gambling-industry-once. Tried: 403 to automated requests (2026-09-28).
• Journalism Zolima City Magazine, "Forgotten Hong Kong Icon: Mahjong from Another Era" — A feature on old Hong Kong mahjong that search results tie to the 1950s parlours.
  Where: https://zolimacitymag.com/forgotten-hong-kong-icon-mahjong-from-another-era/. Tried: The page came back empty (2026-09-28).
• Scholarship Chan, Chi Chuen, William Wai Lim Li and Eugene Chung Ip Leung, "The History of Gambling in Hong Kong and Macao", in Problem Gambling in Hong Kong and Macao (Springer, 2016), pp. 1-36 — An academic history of gambling law in Hong Kong and Macao; likely the best-sourced account of the parlour licences.
  Where: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1068-2_1. Tried: Paywalled.
• Scholarship 魯金 (Lu Jin), 《香港賭博簡史》, Joint Publishing, 2023 — The full book behind the excerpt read here, which may date the licensing.
  Where: Print (三聯書店). Tried: Only the publisher's excerpt is online.
• Rulebook Perlmen, Samuel K. and Mark Kai-Chi Chan, The Chinese Game of Mahjong (Hong Kong, 1979) — The chart's supporting book for this node and the Mahjong Wiki's named fan-list column: Old and New Style as played in Hong Kong. The wiki's scoring page now classes its column as 'New Chapter', the transition from HKOS to Guangdong Style, while Sloper and Kwan cite ch. 8 and p. 56 for the older East-doubling rule and the 2-faan system, so the book may cover both stages.
  Where: Print; the chart's link is a Goodreads record. Tried: Not on the Internet Archive.
• Rulebook Nguyên Xuân Mai, Le mah-jong: guide complet (Haiphong, 1950) — The earliest dated fan-only ruleset, known here only as a column in Depaulis and Tsui's chart.
  Where: Print; in Thierry Depaulis's collection. Tried: Not online.
• Rulebook Millington, A. D., The Complete Book of Mah-Jongg (1977), pp. 118 and 121 — Kwan cites it for Hong Kong bases of 50 or 100 fu, his evidence for why fu stopped mattering. On p. 121 he calls the popular Cantonese form a simplification of the classical game (quoted on Sloperama's CC Theory page). Kwan used the 1998 third impression, ISBN 0-297-81340-4.
  Where: Print. Tried: Not on the Internet Archive.
• Rulebook 簡而清, 《開檯》 (Hong Kong: 博益, 1986; Kwan used the ninth edition, 1988, ISBN 962-17-0088-4) — A Hong Kong primary source cited by both Kwan and Chinese Wikipedia for how the game was played in the 1980s. Kwan cites p. 13 for the names 香港牌, 廣東牌 and 清章麻雀; BBC Chinese (2018) cites it, as 《開台》, for Hong Kong mahjong deriving from Guangdong mahjong.
  Where: Print. Tried: Not online.
• Journalism Hong Kong Chinese newspapers of the 1950s (華僑日報, 工商日報, 工商晚報): mahjong columns, advertisements for manuals and parlour notices — The only way to date the fan-only game in Hong Kong from the period itself. No source read gives a Hong Kong date earlier than Perlmen and Chan (1979)
  Where: Hong Kong Public Libraries, Old Hong Kong Newspapers (MMIS); page scans also at the Internet Archive (collection china-mail). Tried: 2026-10-12: the Archive's headline lists were searched by phrase and gave one 1964 chicken-hand headline. Its Chinese OCR is unusable, so the articles themselves cannot be searched. MMIS not tried: it queues automated readers

Modern HKOS 7

• Rulebook 簡而清, 《開檯》 (Hong Kong: 博益, 1986; Kwan used the ninth printing, 1988, ISBN 962-17-0088-4) — Chinese Wikipedia cites it for the sentence counting 三番起糊 among the additions that make today's game 新派清章, and Kwan and BBC Chinese cite it as the Hong Kong authority. It would show whether the 3-faan minimum was usual by the mid-1980s
  Where: Print; Hong Kong Public Libraries. Tried: Not online. An Internet Archive search for 簡而清 and 開檯 found nothing (2026-10-12)
• Rulebook Perlmen, Samuel K. and Mark Kai-Chi Chan, The Chinese Game of Mahjong (Hong Kong: Book Marketing, 1979; ISBN 962-211-0169) — Kwan cites pp. 69-70 (from a 1989 printing) for the multiple-limit system of the 三三制. A 1979 Hong Kong text would test the chart's 1970s directly, for both the 3-3 system and any minimum
  Where: Print. Tried: Internet Archive advanced search found no copy (2026-10-12). The Google Books API answered 429 in earlier passes and was not retried
• Rulebook Millington, A. D., The Complete Book of Mah-jongg (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977) — Describes Hong Kong practice of the 1970s; Kwan cites p. 118 on Hong Kong raising the base score. It would show whether a faan minimum was usual then
  Where: Print. Tried: Internet Archive advanced search found no copy (2026-10-12)
• Journalism Hong Kong Chinese newspapers of the 1970s-80s (for example 華僑日報, 工商日報) — The only way to date the minimum directly. 華僑日報's headlines name a 全港業餘麻雀比賽 (14 October 1970), a 香港麻雀公開賽 (31 October 1970) and 麻雀王大賽 contests in 1980, 1982, 1986 and 1990-91, whose reports may print the rules played
  Where: Internet Archive, 華僑日報 items such as https://archive.org/details/NPWK19701014 and https://archive.org/details/NPWK19701031 (page scans); Hong Kong Public Libraries' Old Hong Kong Newspapers. Tried: Internet Archive headline metadata searched on 2026-10-12, but the OCR text is unusable, so the pages must be read by eye. The Hong Kong Public Libraries site answered with a queue-it JavaScript waiting room (its own gate, 2026-10-12)
• Journalism South China Morning Post, "Stricter rules for mahjong parlours" — A report on the regulation of parlours, which may say what the licensed parlours played
  Where: https://www.scmp.com/article/35289/stricter-rules-mahjong-parlours. Tried: The site answered 403 with a Cloudflare challenge (its own refusal, 2026-10-12). The Wayback CDX query failed four times on our side: the proxy tunnel closed mid-exchange
• Commercial 香港蔴雀娛樂公司 (Wan Chai), old rule boards (舊牌例) kept from its first premises, opened 1969 — A licensed parlour's posted house rules from 1969 on are the primary record that could date the 3-faan minimum and the payment system in parlour play
  Where: The parlour on Lockhart Road, Wan Chai; perhaps among the photographs in HK01's feature of 29 September 2024. Tried: HK01's article mentions the boards but does not transcribe them; its photo gallery was not read (2026-10-12)
• Guide drchanpierre, 「打麻雀的數學原理」 (Patreon, 25 January 2023) and 「香港［麻雀］術語」 — English Wikipedia's source for the full- and half-spicy tables and the 10-faan cap, and a Cantonese glossary of the game's terms
  Where: https://www.patreon.com/posts/da-ma-que-de-shu-77720693 and https://www.patreon.com/posts/xiang-gang-ma-yu-55178803. Tried: Patreon answered 403 (its own refusal, 2026-10-12)

Guangdong style 6

• Guide astropeople.net, 《廣東麻將番數計算表》 (Guangdong mahjong fan table), captured 21 April 2012 — One of the two sources behind Chinese Wikipedia's hand list, and apparently a Hong Kong one: a check on how much of the list is Taiwanese game rules.
  Where: https://web.archive.org/web/20120421035143/http://www.astropeople.net/mahjong/mahjong.html. Tried: The Wayback Machine refused connections from this environment during the pass (2026-09-28); the live site is gone.
• Commercial 神來也13張廣東麻雀, 算分方式, as captured 1 April 2016 — The older version of the live scoring page read here, to see whether the MCR-named hands were there in 2016.
  Where: https://web.archive.org/web/20160401125628/http://www.godgame.com.tw/13mj/?op=rule_guide&topic=list2_3. Tried: The Wayback Machine refused connections from this environment during the pass (2026-09-28).
• Commercial IGS / GameTower and 明星三缺一 help pages for their 13-tile 廣東麻將 tables (2000s) — The commercial rulesets behind the Taiwanese '廣東十三張' in the 2000s; would date the additive form in Taiwan.
  Where: Not located; the games' old help pages may survive in the Wayback Machine. Tried: Searched for in the previous pass; not found.
• Guide ezmjtw.tripod.com, Taiwanese 廣東十三張 rules page — A Taiwanese player's rules page for the 13-tile Guangdong game, found in search.
  Where: ezmjtw.tripod.com. Tried: The domain no longer resolves, and the Wayback Machine holds no capture of it.
• Rulebook 簡而清, 《開檯》 (Hong Kong: 博益, 1986), ch. 2 §3, pp. 27-28, and ch. 1 §2 — Kwan's source for 六獨: it would date New Chapter to before 1986. Chinese Wikipedia cites ch. 1 §2, giving ISBN 962-17-4906-9, for present Hong Kong play being 'new-style Clear Chapter'. Kwan's ninth edition (1988) carries ISBN 962-17-0088-4.
  Where: Print. Tried: Not online.
• Encyclopedia Baidu Baike, 「广东麻将」 (item 4143465) and 「鸡平胡」 (item 107367) — The mainland's general reference on Guangdong play: may give the four schools, the rules of 鸡平胡 and some history or dates that the game sites copy without sources
  Where: https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%B9%BF%E4%B8%9C%E9%BA%BB%E5%B0%86/4143465 and https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E9%B8%A1%E5%B9%B3%E8%83%A1/107367. Tried: 广东麻将 answered 403 on 2026-10-12, the site's own refusal of automated readers, as in earlier passes; 鸡平胡 was not tried for that reason. Both surfaced in the general search

Guangdong MCR / GMCR 5

• Rulebook The nine Guangdong Style rulesets the GMCR was compiled from — GMCR's author says he built it from the rules shared by a majority of nine translated rulesets (seven in November 2025). Knowing which they are would show whether its 'majority' rules rest on independent sources or on each other.
  Where: Not named by the author's blog (San Hako Mahjong, by MansterSoft). Candidates from its shout-outs: the 'Let's Mahjong!' internal wiki, IGS's 13-tile games, Fanye's Mahjong Archives (Zhihu), the EZMJTW blog, 'The Youth Bachelors Club', Amy Lo's The Book of Mah Jong, and Chinese and Cantonese Wikipedia. The author can be asked on Reddit as u/MansterSoft. Tried: Not listed on the wiki's GMCR or Guangdong Style pages (read 2026-09-28), nor on the blog's history page or its posts of November 2025 and February 2026 (read 2026-10-14), which give only the count
• Tournament rules Any event played under GMCR — An event would be the first witness to GMCR outside its author's own pages, and would turn a proposal into a played ruleset.
  Where: Not known. Reddit (u/MansterSoft, r/Mahjong) is the likeliest place for any announcement. Tried: English and Chinese searches on 2026-09-25, 2026-09-28 and 2026-10-14 (the last including two extended queries), plus YouTube, Bilibili and Sogou WeChat, found none. The author's blog mentions only playtesting and a group he was asked to teach
• Rulebook Amy Lo, The Book of Mahjong (Tuttle, 2001; ISBN 0804833028) — The one English-language Guangdong Style ruleset the GMCR author found, which he says she presents as a variant of Shanghai New Style. A print witness to the 13-tile additive game GMCR standardises, and probably one of the nine rulesets.
  Where: Internet Archive item bookofmahjongill00loam (lending library); print. Tried: The item's OCR text answered 401 on 2026-10-14, the Internet Archive's own lending restriction. It can be borrowed by a logged-in reader
• Guide Fanye's Mahjong Archive, Zhihu column (zhihu.com/column/p/22075399), Chinese-language Guangdong Style write-up — The GMCR author's favourite Chinese-language write-up of Guangdong Style and one of his credited sources; possibly one of the nine rulesets.
  Where: https://www.zhihu.com/column/p/22075399, linked from the San Hako Mahjong Guangdong resources page. Tried: Answered 403 on 2026-10-14, Zhihu's own refusal of automated readers
• Forum Reddit posts and comments by u/MansterSoft, the GMCR author, on r/Mahjong — The author invites questions there, so it is the likeliest place for GMCR to have been announced, discussed or taken up by others. It would show whether anyone besides its author uses it.
  Where: https://www.reddit.com/user/MansterSoft/. Tried: reddit.com answered 403 to the user's submissions listing on 2026-10-14, the site's own refusal; the search tool cannot search reddit.com

Taiwanese style 8

• Historical 白中發 (ed.), 《16牌麻將必勝戰法》 (Winning strategy for 16-tile mahjong). Taipei: 新力, 1977 (民66). 219 pp. — The earliest dated Taiwanese book on sixteen-tile play found. It is three years before the chart's 1980s, and its rules would show whether tai and base were already the scoring then
  Where: Taipei Public Library, call no. 998.4 2651; Tunghai University Library, 998.4 2651-01 (as 16牌麻雀必勝戰法). A sequel, 16張絕招麻將必贏 (Chiayi: 綺音, 1981), is at the National Central Library, 998.4 8667-10. Tried: Not online. NBINet records read 2026-10-09 through its Primo API
• Historical 貽香堂主人, 《麻雀戰術研究》 (A study of mahjong tactics). Taipei: 清華, 1961 (民50). 80 pp. — The earliest mahjong book published in Taiwan found in the union catalogue. It would show whether Taipei play in 1961 was 13 or 16 tiles
  Where: National Cheng Kung University Library, call no. 998.4 6290. Tried: Not online. NBINet record read 2026-10-09
• Scholarship 潘八條, 《台灣島的麻將歷史》 (A history of mahjong on the island of Taiwan). Taipei: the author, February 2026. ISBN 978-626-01-5913-9 — The only book-length history of mahjong in Taiwan found. It may answer when and in what form the sixteen-tile game arrived
  Where: Listed in NBINet from the ISBN/CIP service; no library holding yet. Tried: NBINet CIP record read 2026-10-09; a web search for the title found nothing else
• Rulebook Chang, Dragon Shiang-yu (張襄玉). Wonderful Taiwan Mah Jong = 台灣麻雀: Taiwan rules + international rules. Taipei: the author, 2003. 158 pp. ISBN 9574111741 — The 'Dragon Chang' book Sloper lists for this variant: an English rulebook for the Taiwanese game by a player who represented Taiwan in international play
  Where: National Central Library, GV1299.M3 C362; Nantou County Library, 998.4 1101. Tried: Not online. NBINet record read 2026-10-09; the author's own essay is read (chang-2022-mahjong-story)
• Rulebook Amy Lo, The Book of Mahjong: An Illustrated Guide (2001), as listed by Sloper — Sloper names it as a book for this variant
  Where: Print. Tried: Not read; not searched this pass
• Rulebook The Los Angeles Mahjong League's Taiwanese 'House Rules' — The second tai column the Mahjong Wiki prints beside IGS. Its own rules would show where the difference comes from
  Where: Not located. Tried: The wiki's scoring page (read 2026-10-09) names the 'House Rules' but gives no link or publication details
• Guide ezmjtw.tripod.com, 「台灣十六張麻將」 — A Taiwanese player's full rules page for the sixteen-tile game, which search engines still index
  Where: https://ezmjtw.tripod.com/mahjong16-big5.htm. Tried: 2026-10-09: over http the name did not resolve; over https the proxy refused CONNECT; Wayback CDX connections were reset five times. All failures on our side. Earlier: proxy 502 (2026-09-28)
• Journalism 臺灣日日新報 (Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō), 1920s-1940s: reports of 麻雀 in Taiwan — The only way to see when and in what form mahjong reached Taiwan, and whether it was played with 13 or 16 tiles under Japanese rule. Chang's account would put sixteen-tile play there before 1949
  Where: The 臺灣日日新報 database (subscription; National Taiwan Library and university libraries). Tried: Not freely online; not retried this pass

Hong Kong Taiwanese 8

• Forum LIHKG threads on 港式台牌: 「[推廣有圖]打厭左廣東牌？試下打考腦既港式台灣牌！」 (thread 1021593) and 「最近玩港式台牌，規則每個地方唔同，大家一齊討論統一標準啦！」 (thread 3910455) — Players promoting the game against 廣東牌 and comparing house rules. Per search snippets they discuss 叮, the 拉 and cutting the carry, and should show how the game varies from table to table
  Where: https://lihkg.com/thread/1021593/page/1 and https://lihkg.com/thread/3910455/page/1. Tried: 2026-10-09: LIHKG's API answered 403 from Cloudflare, and its thread pages come back to automated readers as empty script shells. The refusal is the site's
• Forum discuss.com.hk (香港討論區), 麻雀娛樂 board: 「台牌花糊問題!」 (thread 12735213) — Per its search snippet, a question on whether a flower win is carried or kicked, with replies saying tables count it both ways. Direct evidence of how house rules vary
  Where: https://www.discuss.com.hk/archiver/?tid-12735213.html. Tried: 2026-10-09: a Cloudflare 'Just a moment' challenge on the thread and on the site search. The refusal is the site's
• Journalism Ming Pao Our Lifestyle (明報), 「打四圈推介：搓麻將計分好幫手」, 21 January 2023 — Per its search snippet, a press account of scoring apps for Hong Kong home play that sets 台灣牌 against 廣東牌 and names a 台灣牌計番 app
  Where: https://ol.mingpao.com/ldy/cultureleisure/culture/20230121/1674238159604/. Tried: 2026-10-09: a Cloudflare challenge (403). The refusal is the site's
• Journalism Ming Pao Our Lifestyle (明報), 「四方城看世界變 麻將館深度遊」, 31 July 2026 — A feature on Hong Kong mahjong parlours that may say whether parlours deal 台灣牌. No source read here confirms the game in licensed parlours
  Where: https://ol.mingpao.com/ldy/cultureleisure/culture/20260731/1785431828081/. Tried: 2026-10-09: a Cloudflare challenge (403). The refusal is the site's
• Guide 「港式台灣牌 lecture note」, uploaded to Studocu under the Chinese University of Hong Kong course Understanding China — Chinese Wikipedia's main cited source for the game's definition and for the 拉
  Where: https://www.studocu.com/hk/document/%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF%E4%B8%AD%E6%96%87%E5%A4%A7%E5%AD%B8/understanding-china/%E6%B8%AF%E5%BC%8F%E5%8F%B0%E7%81%A3%E7%89%8C-lecture-note/74298221. Tried: 2026-10-09: Studocu answered 403 with its own 'Access Blocked' page. The refusal is the site's
• Guide AtRoot, 「港式台灣牌番數表」, PDF uploaded October 2014 (atroot.hk) — A second dated faan table, from 2014, which Chinese Wikipedia cites. It would help date the game in Hong Kong
  Where: http://www.atroot.hk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/mj.pdf; Wayback capture https://web.archive.org/web/20180219005318/http://www.atroot.hk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/mj.pdf. Tried: 2026-10-09: the live URL answers 404 (the site's own). The Wayback capture failed with connection resets in the agent proxy's tunnel on our side, so someone on another network may read it
• Guide uptogo.com.tw, 「台麻有16不搭嗎？」 — Per its search snippet, a Taiwanese site saying the 十六不搭 hand belongs mainly to Hong Kong-style Taiwanese, as a Hong Kong change to the Taiwanese game, worth 40 to 60 faan depending on the source. A view of the difference from the Taiwanese side
  Where: https://uptogo.com.tw/遊戲/台麻有16不搭嗎？/. Tried: 2026-10-09: a Cloudflare challenge (403). The refusal is the site's
• Tournament rules Hong Kong Mahjong Association, 香港麻雀公開賽2026競賽規程 and the competition regulations for the 港式台牌公開賽 (Hong Kong Taiwanese Mahjong Open) — The rules of the one open competition in the game found
  Where: Linked from https://www.hkmahjong.org/hongkongmahjongopen2026. Tried: 2026-10-09: the page names the documents, but the links are drawn by script and are absent from its HTML. A browser may reach them

Nanyang variants 5

• Rulebook Strauser, Kitty, and Lucille Evans. Mah Jong, Anyone? A Manual of Modern Play. Tuttle, 1964 — Phua (2008) cites it for animal tiles used with a capture rule. It would be the earliest dated rules text for the group's best-known tiles
  Where: Internet Archive, mahjonganyoneman0000stra (2002 printing, lending only); libraries; Sloper's 2006 revision, Mah Jong, Anyone?: A Manual of Western Play. Tried: Internet Archive advanced search on 2026-10-09 found the item, but it is access-restricted with no full text
• Journalism The Straits Times (Singapore), 24 December 1924, 'Origin of Mah Jongg' — The earliest Singapore press item on mahjong found in this pass, cited by Chinese Wikipedia's 麻将 article. It would date the game's presence in Singapore decades before the 1950-80 exodus the Mahjong Wiki credits
  Where: NewspaperSG, article straitstimes19241224.2.5; the Wayback capture (5 June 2012) of the old newspapers.nl.sg URL. Tried: On 2026-10-09 NewspaperSG answered HTTP 202 with an empty body, a script challenge on the library's side. web.archive.org connections were reset through the research proxy, a failure on our side
• Encyclopedia Mahjong Wiki (the old site, before 2025), 'Malaysian Overview' (rules:malaysian-overview), and its page on Singapore play — The Mahjong Wiki's pages on Singapore and Malaysia exist only on the old site, since the new wiki has no Southeast Asian pages. They are the wiki's only account of the members of the group it once named
  Where: Wayback Machine capture of 14 May 2025 (https://web.archive.org/web/20250514085053/http://mahjong.wikidot.com/rules:malaysian-overview); the Singapore page's name is not known. Tried: The live wiki's page list (7 pages, 2026-10-09) has no Southeast Asian pages. archive.org's availability API listed the Malaysian capture and found none for five guessed Singapore page names, then answered 429. web.archive.org connections were reset through the research proxy on about 25 attempts on 2026-10-09, a failure on our side
• Historical Nguyen Xuan Mai, Le mah-jong: guide complet. Jeu avec les 8 rois supplémentaires. Haiphong: the author, 1950 — The earliest dated rulebook for any member of the group. Stanwick and Xu use it to tie Vietnamese play to Changsha 王麻雀, and its date tests the wiki's 1950-80s origin
  Where: Library catalogues (BnF, WorldCat); cited in Stanwick and Xu (2008). Tried: No digitised copy or catalogue record found by web search (2026-09-29). Internet Archive advanced search found no item (2026-10-09)
• Collection Mahjong Museum (Takeshobo, Chiba), 「亞洲麻雀」 page on Asian sets — Photographs of Vietnamese, Thai and Malaysian sets, cited by both Wikipedias. It holds the one photograph of a Thai set that a Sloperama correspondent could find
  Where: http://museum.takeshobo.co.jp/houmotsu/world/asia/index.html (Wayback 2021-01-21). Tried: The live page and the Wayback capture both returned nothing (2026-09-29). On 2026-10-09 the host museum.takeshobo.co.jp did not resolve from the research environment, and web.archive.org was unreachable through the proxy

Singapore style 7

• Rulebook Ching, Celia. Amazing Mahjong: Learn to Maximise Your Winning Potential and Have Fun. Singapore: Celia Ching (Rank Books), 2010. ISBN 978-981-08-7218-2 — The one book on the Singapore game. Sloperama names it as the rules text for this variant, and the former Wikipedia article gives it as its only reference
  Where: Singapore bookshops and the National Library of Singapore; Google Books id 1XX-ZwEACAAJ. Tried: Only catalogue entries and a review are online. Google Books was not tried this pass (the API answered 429 earlier)
• Rulebook Strauser, Kitty, and Lucille Evans. Mah Jong, Anyone? A Manual of Modern Play. Tuttle, 1964 (Internet Archive item mahjonganyoneman0000stra) — Cited by Phua (2010) for a capture rule for the predator and prey animal tiles, which may be the earliest printed account of the Singapore animals
  Where: https://archive.org/details/mahjonganyoneman0000stra. Tried: The Internet Archive copy is restricted to lending, with no open full text (2026-10-09)
• Guide Just Another Guy SG. "How to Play Singapore Mahjong (Part 1)." justanotherguysg.com, 21 May 2020 — Linked from Sloperama's Singapore Style entry as a rules explainer
  Where: https://justanotherguysg.com/2020/05/21/how-to-play-singapore-mahjong-part-1/. Tried: The research proxy refused the CONNECT (502), and web.archive.org reset every connection, on 2026-10-09. Both failures were on our side, so someone on another network may read it
• Commercial Mahjong SG (mahjongsg.com) — Linked from Sloperama's Singapore Style entry; may carry the app's rules
  Where: https://mahjongsg.com/. Tried: A plain GET returns an empty single-page shell drawn by script (2026-10-09); a real browser may read it
• Journalism The Straits Times, 2008, on community centres and mahjong — Cited by Phua for the rule that barred mahjong tournaments at People's Association centres; it would date the change to today's CC tournaments
  Where: NewspaperSG (eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers). Tried: NewspaperSG returned HTTP 202 with an empty body, the site's own bot protection, on 2026-10-09 as in the earlier pass
• Encyclopedia National Library Board, Infopedia: "Gambling in Singapore" — The national library's account of gambling history in Singapore, which search results say covers mahjong
  Where: https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_1114_2007-01-12.html. Tried: Returned HTTP 202 with an empty body again on 2026-10-09; no Infopedia article on mahjong itself surfaced in two searches
• Historical Singapore and Malayan newspapers of the 1920s-1950s on mahjong and its tiles, beginning with The Straits Times, 24 December 1924, p. 3, 'Origin of Mah Jongg' (cited by Chinese Wikipedia) — The only way to date when the animal tiles and local scoring appeared, and to test the post-war dating
  Where: NewspaperSG; a Wayback capture of 5 June 2012 of newspapers.nl.sg/Digitised/Article/straitstimes19241224.2.5.aspx. Tried: NewspaperSG returned 202 with an empty body, and web.archive.org reset every connection, on 2026-10-09

Malaysian 3-player 7

• Journalism Xuan (xuan.com.my), 「新年游戏攻略！三人麻将玩法 看完马上会玩！」 — A Malaysian Chinese media guide to the three-player game, independent of the wikis; a search summary says it covers the tiles, the deal and the 飛 rules.
  Where: https://xuan.com.my/play/3-player-mahjong. Tried: Retried 2026-10-09: the site's Cloudflare protection answered 403 ('Sorry, you have been blocked'), the site's own refusal.
• Commercial GoPlayPlay, Mahjong 3P rules page — The app's full rules, linked from its Google Play and App Store listings.
  Where: http://site.goplayplay.com/games/m3p/en/rules. Tried: Retried 2026-10-09: the proxy answered 503 'upstream connect error ... connection timeout', a failure on the connection side, not the site's refusal. The Wayback CDX API reset the connection through the proxy three times, and archive.org's availability API answered 429.
• Rulebook Any description of Sloperama's Malaysian three-player 'B' (108 tiles) — The only source for a second Malaysian three-player form is Sloperama's catalogue, which says its details are unknown; Sloper's 2007 reply on the Malaysian page says he had heard of two three-player variants popular in Malaysia.
  Where: Not located. Tried: Searched again in English on 2026-10-09; nothing found. No Chinese or forum source read mentions a 108-tile Malaysian game.
• Commercial ezi365, 「马来西亚三人麻将规则」 — A retailer's rules page whose search snippet matches the Cari post's tile list; it may be the original of the text the Cari post says it reposted from 雀聖麻将贸易.
  Where: https://www.ezi365.net/good-article/malaysia-mahjong/. Tried: 2026-10-09: the egress proxy refused the CONNECT twice (connect_rejected, HTTP 502), and plain http did not resolve. A failure on this side, not the site's.
• Rulebook Lo, Amy. The Book of Mahjong: An Illustrated Guide. Tuttle, 2001. — English Wikipedia cites it ('Art. 2.19') for its statement that some variations remove a whole suit, in the paragraph that says Malaysian mahjong uses only circles and honours.
  Where: https://archive.org/details/bookofmahjongill00loam (Internet Archive lending library). Tried: The item is access-restricted: its full text is private and in-book search answered 403 (2026-10-09). It can be borrowed and read by hand.
• Commercial Chevron Cars, 'The history of mahjong' (chevroncars.com, 2009) — Cited by English Wikipedia at the end of the same paragraph; reading it would show whether the circles-only statement rests on anything beyond Sloperama.
  Where: https://web.archive.org/web/20120429074008/http://www.chevroncars.com/learn/fun-games/the-history-of-mahjong. Tried: 2026-10-09: the Wayback Machine reset the connection through the proxy four times (ws_closed_mid_exchange). A failure on this side.
• Guide Mahjongo, 'How to play Malaysia mahjong' — A rules page on the Malaysian game that searches in English and Malay turned up; a search summary says its tile list is muddled, which is worth checking.
  Where: https://rules.mahjongo.com/?p=88. Tried: 2026-10-09: the proxy tunnel reset over https three times (ws_closed_mid_exchange), and http answered 503 from the proxy. A failure on this side.

Malaysian 4-player 5

• Rulebook Pritchard, D. Brine. Mahjong (Teach Yourself). Hodder Headline / Contemporary Books, 2001 (ISBN 9780658021473): the passage on Malaysian mahjong's bonus tiles — A print description of Malaysian mahjong's bonus tiles from before the 2007 Sloperama letters. It may describe the larger four-player set.
  Where: https://archive.org/details/mahjong00prit (lending library, access-restricted). Tried: Internet Archive full-text search, 2026-10-09, gave the snippet 'In Malaysian mahjong, as in Thai mahjong, a proliferation of bonus tiles is'. The full text (djvu.txt) answered 401: the Archive's lending restriction, the site's decision.
• Forum Lowyat Forum, 'Any people know how to play mahjong?' (topic 4859938) — Malaysian players discussing set sizes; search snippets mention 148-tile sets without Fei and a 160-tile set with Fei, and whether four-player games use Fei.
  Where: https://forum.lowyat.net/topic/4859938/all. Tried: Cloudflare challenge ('Just a moment...') and HTTP 403 on 2026-10-09: the site's refusal.
• Forum Lowyat Forum, 'Do u use fei when play mahjong?' (topic 5239888) — A Malaysian thread on whether the Fei joker is used, which search snippets say touches on four-player versus three-player games.
  Where: https://forum.lowyat.net/topic/5239888. Tried: HTTP 403 (Cloudflare) on 2026-10-09: the site's refusal.
• Rulebook The French-language rules sheet used by Tine Willis's group in Kuala Lumpur (c. 2007), and Sylvain Malbec's English translation — The only rules text for the four-player game; everything the chart says about its rules comes from it.
  Where: Scans were sent to Tom Sloper and Sylvain Malbec in June 2007; not published on Sloperama. Tried: Not found online; Malbec's site (ooyamaneko.net) carries riichi and MCR rules, not this. Sloperama's Malaysian page, re-read on 2026-10-09, still does not publish it.
• Forum Mobile01, 「馬來西亞麻將玩法」 thread — A Chinese-language discussion of how Malaysians play, which may say whether a four-player local game exists.
  Where: https://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=179&t=1714737. Tried: Access denied (Akamai) to automated readers; HTTP 403 again on 2026-10-09.

Filipino style 4

• Forum A rec.games.mahjong post of September 1998 on Filipino rules, archived at mahjongarchives.tripod.com/post/1998/9809-03.htm — The rules source Sloperama's Filipino entry names, and one Ging's Brain cites. It is the earliest rules text cited for the variant.
  Where: http://mahjongarchives.tripod.com/post/1998/9809-03.htm; the Wayback Machine; the Google Groups archive of rec.games.mahjong, September 1998. Tried: 2026-10-10: the host does not resolve from here (a DNS failure on this side). Ten Wayback id_ requests got no reply through the proxy (connection reset), also a failure on this side and not a refusal by the archive.
• Encyclopedia Mahjong Wiki, "Filipino Gameplay" (rules:filipino-gameplay), with its overview and scoring pages — Search results show the wiki once had Filipino pages: chows only from the left, flowers and honours replaced at once, five sets and a pair. The wiki is a reference the chart's tree draws on.
  Where: http://mahjong.wikidot.com/rules:filipino-gameplay; Wayback Machine captures. Tried: 2026-10-10: the live wiki answers with its own 'page does not exist' (404) for rules:filipino-gameplay, rules:filipino-overview and rules:filipino-scoring, so the pages were removed. Wayback CDX and capture requests got connection resets through the proxy (this side).
• Guide Mahjong Museum, "filirule.htm" (Filipino rules), mahjongmuseum.com — Cited by Ging's Brain as a source for its Filipino rules; a second early rules text.
  Where: http://www.mahjongmuseum.com/filirule.htm (dead); Wayback Machine. Tried: 2026-10-10: ten Wayback id_ requests got no reply through the proxy (this side's failure).
• Journalism Inquirer Lifestyle, "From titas to TikTok: How mahjong became a Filipino cool-girl staple" (and "Mahjong is having a moment again. Here's where to play in Manila") — A national daily on how the game is taught and played in Philippine households. Search snippets say the rules are passed down orally and that players know their flowers by heart.
  Where: https://lifestyle.inquirer.net/545575/mahjong-cool-girl-staple/; https://lifestyle.inquirer.net/580157/where-to-play-mahjong-in-manila/. Tried: 2026-10-10: both answered 403 to a plain request. That is the site's refusal.

Bashi-Bashi 4

• Journalism The rest of Kuroki Masaki's article (note.com, 25 November 2023) — The paid part continues the account of the Cebu visit and may say how the game was played, how long it ran and how the casino took it up.
  Where: https://note.com/kinmakuroki/n/n7e277b57418c. Tried: Behind the site's own paywall (¥150 for the remaining 2,244 characters); checked again 2026-10-10.
• Journalism The 「モンド21杯」 television feature on BASHI-BASHI (c. 2003-04) — Film of the game as played in the Cebu casino, the only other first-hand record known.
  Where: MONDO TV (モンド21) archives. Tried: Known only from Kuroki's article. On 2026-10-10 a general and a YouTube-restricted search for the feature found nothing.
• Rulebook Itō Takuma, 賭けずに楽しむ日本の賭博ゲーム (Rittōsha, 2015), pp. 119-123 — The printed source Japanese Wikipedia cites for 東天紅, the rule set Kuroki says BASHI-BASHI followed, including the 112-tile form.
  Where: ISBN 9784845625918. Tried: A book in print; not online. Not re-tried 2026-10-10.
• Guide Wayback Machine captures of Sloperama FAQ 2b, 2005-2015 — Would show version A as first entered in July 2005 and whether Sloper named the informant or the casino.
  Where: https://web.archive.org/web/2005*/sloperama.com/mjfaq/mjfaq02b.html. Tried: 2026-10-10: CDX and id_ capture requests failed with connection resets in the agent proxy's tunnel to web.archive.org, a failure on our side, and the availability API returned no snapshot. Someone on another network may read them.

Vietnamese classical 3

• Historical Nguyen Xuan Mai, Le mah-jong: guide complet. Jeu avec les 8 rois supplémentaires. Haiphong: the author, 1950 — The earliest dated rulebook for the Vietnamese game, in French, with the eight 'kings' (jokers). It underlies Depaulis's and Stanwick and Xu's link to Changsha 王麻雀, and Bridget Young's notes to the Edward translation cite it for the payment rule of 1950.
  Where: BnF, National Library of Vietnam, WorldCat. Cited in Stanwick and Xu (2008) and in the Edward translation's notes; the translator may hold a copy.. Tried: Web search found no digitised copy. The BnF catalogue (SRU author search, 2026-10-10) lists other works by a Hanoi author named Nguyễn Xuân Mai (1922-1954) but not this guide. WorldCat was not searched.
• Journalism 壹週刊 (Next Magazine), 「油尖旺潮玩　至激越南麻雀」, 24 September 2003 — A Hong Kong account of Vietnamese mahjong as played in Hong Kong, cited by Chinese Wikipedia for the joker tiles.
  Where: Wayback capture https://web.archive.org/web/20191116164654/https://hk.lifestyle.appledaily.com/nextplus/magazine/article/20030924/2_3553182/ (as cited by Chinese Wikipedia 麻將牌). Tried: The capture reset the connection twice through the proxy on 2026-10-10, as it did on 2026-10-01. The failure is on this side of the connection, so another network may read it. The publisher's own site is closed.
• Law Bộ luật Hình sự 2015 (Luật số 100/2015/QH13, sửa đổi, bổ sung 2017), Điều 321: Tội đánh bạc — The criminal article on gambling. It applies to mạt chược played for money above its thresholds, and complements the administrative fines of Decree 282/2025.
  Where: vbpl.vn, thuvienphapluat.vn, vanban.chinhphu.vn, Vietnamese Wikisource (Bộ luật Hình sự 2015, sửa đổi 2017, Phần thứ hai, Chương XXI). Tried: 2026-10-10: thuvienphapluat.vn answered 403 (the site's own refusal); vbpl.vn returned a page drawn by script; vanban.chinhphu.vn and moj.gov.vn reset the connection through the proxy (this side); Wikisource's chapter page transcludes page scans.

Vietnamese modern 2

• Rulebook Any Vietnamese-language rules for play with three or four joker sets — The rules found for the multi-frame game are in English, from one Vietnamese-American informant on Sloperama and a translator's comparison table. No Vietnamese text sets out the frame bonuses or the changed values (seven pairs, No Flowers, No Leaves)
  Where: Rule sheets sold with sets; Vietnamese-American and Vietnamese clubs and Facebook groups; Vietnamese e-commerce listings. Tried: Vietnamese queries through the general search tool on 2026-10-10 found only 160-tile how-to pages. Cốc Cốc needs JavaScript and Facebook is behind a login, both the sites' own barriers; Bing returned a degraded page to the script
• Commercial Sellers' or makers' listings of 176-, 184- or 188-tile Vietnamese sets (Shopee, Lazada, Tiki in Vietnam; Walmart, eBay, Etsy, desertcart abroad) — A seller's tile count would confirm and date the multi-frame sets independently of Sloperama and Wikipedia. The two sets read so far (Chop Suey Club, Mahjong Pros) are 160-tile classical sets
  Where: tiki.vn, shopee.vn, lazada.vn; walmart.com item 5233532551 (a 164-tile 'Chinese Vietnamese' set); desertcart product 106610436 'Vietnamese mahjong set'. Tried: On 2026-10-10 Tiki's API answered 403, Walmart a robot check, eBay 403, and desertcart and Etsy a challenge page, all refusals by the sites themselves

Pong 1

• Historical Dobree, C. T. Gambling Games of Malaya. Kuala Lumpur: Caxton Press, 1955 (preface dated 1 February 1955), pp. 137-138 — The only primary source for Pong. Depaulis's transcription of these pages is now read, but it replaces Dobree's sinograms with pinyin, so his Chinese names for the tiles, any sinogram for the game's name and the rest of his section on games with mah jong tiles are known only at second hand.
  Where: National Library of Singapore (a citation in its Infopedia, seen in search results, gives call number RCLOS 795 DOB); WorldCat OCLC 3240893. The Mahjong Tile Set's collector and George Pollard each appear to own a copy.. Tried: 2026-10-11. On the sites' side: WorldCat answered a Cloudflare challenge (403); NLB's eresources pages answered HTTP 202 with an empty body, and its catalogue draws results by script whose file answered 403; the Library of Congress search answered 403; the Google Books API answered 429. HathiTrust's catalog API has no record for OCLC 3240893, and Internet Archive metadata and full-text search find no copy. On our side: Open Library's connection was dropped at the agent proxy.

MCR / Chinese official 11

• Official rules 《中国麻将竞赛规则（试行）》, 1998, the full book (ISBN 7-5009-1630-2) — The Wikisource text is an excerpt: it lacks the table of the 81 patterns and the pages (97-98) Chinese Wikipedia cites for the drafting history.
  Where: An image scan of the whole book, hosted by the Mahjong International League: https://mahjong-mil.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Chinese_mahjong_rules_try.pdf (linked from https://mahjong-mil.org/rules_inter/). National Library of China; WorldCat OCLC 768652206. Tried: Found on 2026-10-14. The scan has no text layer, so it can be looked at but not quoted; pp. 24 and 26 of the fan table were read by eye (recorded on MCR scoring reference). A transcription of pp. 97-98, which Chinese Wikipedia cites for the drafting history, is still wanted.
• Rulebook Du Weizhong (杜维忠), 《中国麻将竞赛规则（试行）》问答. Beijing: 人民体育出版社, 2006, ISBN 7-5009-3062-3 — An authorised question-and-answer guide to the 1998 rules, cited by Chinese Wikipedia for the early history and the sixteen-hand match.
  Where: WorldCat OCLC 276447975. Tried: Not online.
• Forum Baidu Tieba, 国标麻将吧 (tieba.baidu.com/f?kw=国标麻将) — The main Chinese players' forum for the rules, where questions of interpretation, and the split between the 1998 text and the WMO rules, are discussed
  Where: tieba.baidu.com. Tried: Answered 403 with Baidu's security-verification page on 2026-10-14 (the site's refusal). Reddit r/Mahjong also refuses automated readers, and Google Groups' rec.games.mahjong search answered 429 (the site's rate limit)
• Historical 彭汶, 晓霞 编. 《麻将十日通》 (十日通丛书). 北京: 京华出版社, 1998. ISBN 9787806002872. 247 pp. — A popular manual published a month after the rules, with an appendix introducing 《中国麻将竞赛规则》: how the new rules were presented to players in 1998
  Where: Beijing public libraries, Guangzhou and Jilin Provincial Library, per Douban. Tried: Only Douban's listing (book.douban.com/subject/1021127, read 2026-10-14) is online; no digital copy found
• Journalism People's Daily (人民日报) and 中国体育报 reports of 1998 on the issue of 《中国麻将竞赛规则（试行）》 and on the first national mahjong championship (Guangzhou, December 1998) — The contemporary record of the rules' issue and of how the state framed them. It would settle the competing dates (July, September, November 1998) and the '255th sport' claim
  Where: 人民日报图文数据库 (data.people.com.cn, by subscription); the archives of 中国体育报. Tried: Chinese web searches on 2026-10-14 returned no 1998 report; both archives are by subscription
• Law 国家体育总局 (General Administration of Sport). 《国家体育总局关于公布我国正式开展的体育项目的通知》, 1999, and its revision of about 2007 — Sina (2019) says mahjong was not on this list of officially conducted sports from 1999 to 2007. That runs against the claim, found only in English and Japanese sources, that mahjong became China's 255th sport in January 1998
  Where: sport.gov.cn; the State Council gazette; PKULaw. Tried: Web search and a Chinese Wikisource search on 2026-10-14 did not find the text
• Official rules 中国麻将競塞規則編写組, 麻雀博物館 編. 『世界麻雀2000国際公式統一ルール : 麻雀用語解説中国・日本・米国3ヶ国語』. 竹書房, 1999. 141 pp. — The first Japanese edition of the rules, trilingual and co-edited by the Mahjong Museum. It would show how the 1998 rules reached Japan and whether a separate 'international' version of September 1998 existed
  Where: NDL Digital Collections, info:ndljp/pid/14137729 (NDL premises only); many Japanese prefectural libraries. Tried: The NDL record was read on 2026-10-14. The digital copy is restricted to the NDL's reading rooms (the library's restriction)
• Scholarship Aono Shigeru 青野滋. 「中国麻将の手役分類考」 (On the classification of hands in Chinese mahjong). 大阪商業大学アミューズメント産業研究所紀要 12 (2010): 133-160 — A Japanese study of how MCR's scoring patterns are classified, which bears on the claim that the 81 patterns took in the Japanese yaku
  Where: NDL (call number Z71-C554); CiNii CRID 1520009409293146752. Tried: Only the NDL and CiNii records were found; the article is not in the Osaka University of Commerce repository (API search, 2026-10-14)
• Scholarship Aono Shigeru 青野滋. 『中国のマージャン : 日本麻雀に映る中国麻将の影』 (Chinese mahjong: its shadow in Japanese mahjong). 大阪商業大学アミューズメント産業研究所, 2022 — A monograph on Chinese mahjong as reflected in Japanese mahjong; probably the fullest Japanese account of how MCR relates to Japanese rules
  Where: NDL (R100000002-I032097666). Tried: Catalogue record only (NDL Search, 2026-10-14)
• Scholarship Festa, Paul E. "Mahjong Politics in Contemporary China: Civility, Chineseness, and Mass Culture." positions: east asia cultures critique 14, no. 1 (2006) — The academic study the canonical wiki cites on Sheng Qi's 'healthy mahjong' and the state's project behind the rules
  Where: Duke University Press (positions). Tried: Known from the wiki's citation. The journal is by subscription and was not tried in this lean pass
• Official rules The Chinese edition of the WMO's Mahjong Competition Rules (2006), published by 中国社会科学出版社 (China Social Sciences Press) — The Green Book says the Chinese edition prevails over the English in any dispute. The WMO also issued a Chinese–English–Japanese edition in 2014
  Where: World Mahjong Organization / World Mahjong Contest Center ([email protected]); 中国社会科学出版社. Tried: The WMO's site (mindmahjong.com, info id=131, read 2026-10-14) names the publisher but gives no text. WorldCat answered 403 with a challenge

MCR scoring reference 5

• Rulebook Competition Mahjong Official International Rulebook. Tokyo: Takeshobo, 2002, ISBN 4-8124-0944-6 — The first English edition of the 1998 rules, according to Starbäck. Sloperama says its Example 6 on page 13 is wrong.
  Where: Japanese and international libraries; second-hand sellers. Tried: The copy Starbäck links (daimi.au.dk/~mahjong/OIRE.pdf, now cs.au.dk) returns 404.
• Guide MahjongSoft, Book_MCR_ENG_end.pdf (an English MCR handbook) — A widely used English MCR scoring guide, likely with fan-by-fan examples.
  Where: mahjongsoft.com. Tried: TLS failure by curl; HTTP 503 by WebFetch.
• Official rules Explanation of Mahjong Competition Rules, the WMCC original with its tile diagrams — The text read here was pulled from the Word file without the diagrams, so the worked examples cannot be checked hand by hand.
  Where: Sylvain Malbec, ooyamaneko.net (.doc); World Mahjong Contest Center. Tried: LibreOffice could not open the file; only the plain text could be extracted.
• Tournament rules European Mahjong Association, MCR Referee Manual (binding at MERS tournaments from 1 January 2009) — The EMA's MCR page and its 2026 tournament guidelines name it, with the Tournament Regulations, as the document that amends the Green Book for European competition. It is probably where referees' scoring rulings are written down.
  Where: European Mahjong Association (mahjong-europe.org); EMA-certified referees. Tried: Not linked from the EMA's MCR rules page or its regulations page (both read 2026-10-14); a web search for it returned only third-party summaries (an Xmind penalty template).
• Official rules World Mahjong Organization, 国际麻将竞技初级规则 (International Mahjong Competition Beginner Rules), 2014 — According to Japanese Wikipedia, the one official cut-down version of the table: fewer fan, a 6-point minimum and no 8-point base payment.
  Where: chinamajiang.com/htdocs/pages.asp?id=28 (cited by Japanese Wikipedia); the WMO / World Mahjong Contest Center. Tried: chinamajiang.com answered with its own 403 on 2026-10-14. The Wayback CDX query returned the Internet Archive's 'Temporarily Offline' page, a failure on the archive's side, so it is worth trying again.

Zung Jung 8

• Forum BoardGameGeek. "2007 World Series of Mahjong: overview and day 1." Thread 171631 — A first-hand report from the first World Series of Mahjong, the event that introduced Zung Jung to tournament play.
  Where: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/171631/2007-world-series-of-mahjong-overview-and-day-1. Tried: The page returns a script shell without content; the XML API now requires authorisation.
• Tournament rules The World Series of Mahjong tournament rules (Kwan's three-language edition) — The 'slight modification' of Zung Jung actually used in competition, in English, Chinese and Japanese. It would settle the minimum-hand question and show how far the 2026 ZJM Competition Rules depart from it; the ZJM rules reproduce only its 2018 tournament-format section.
  Where: Wayback Machine captures of world-series-mahjong.com (2006-2008, including /mahjong-japanese/), wsom168.com and worldmahjong.com (2010-2018, including /ja/ and /world-series-2015/). Tried: On 2026-10-16 every request to web.archive.org (CDX and id_ captures) was reset inside this environment's proxy tunnel, a failure on our side that another network may not have. The live domains were dead or for sale in earlier passes. The rules were re-filed from rulebook to tournament-rules.
• Organisation World Series of Mahjong, 2007 history page (wsom168.com) — The organiser's own record of the first event, cited by Wikipedia. The Japanese Wikipedia also cites worldmahjong.com/ja/ pages for each year (2007, 2008, 2010, 2015).
  Where: Wayback Machine, capture of 18 July 2011; worldmahjong.com/ja/イベント/過去のイベント/ pages. Tried: The Wayback Machine returned nothing in an earlier pass. On 2026-10-16 every connection to web.archive.org was reset inside the proxy tunnel, a failure on our side.
• Official rules Early Zung Jung v1.x and v2.x texts (e.g. Usenet rec.games.mahjong posts) — Would date the system's first public release. Usenet shows v2.4 (English) and v2.51 (Chinese) online by 17 September 2003; v1.x, from Kwan's Toronto years, is undated.
  Where: Kwan's old site home.netvigator.com/~tarot/Mahjong/ (and /Mahjong/ZungJung/, 2003-2007) in the Wayback Machine; rec.games.mahjong before July 2003. Tried: The Internet Archive's FULL-USENET-BACKUP rec.games.mahjong item was read in full: it begins on 1 July 2003 and already shows v2.4 and v2.51. Google Groups refuses automated readers (429). On 2026-10-16 the Wayback Machine connection was reset inside the proxy tunnel, a failure on our side.
• Tournament rules Mahjong Australia (Australian Mahjong Association). "Traditional scoring pattern (NSW)." — Moegirlpedia cites it for the Australian Mahjong Association's Zung Jung variant with a 5-point minimum. The association ran the 2013 Sydney World Series, per Chinese Wikipedia.
  Where: http://mahjongaustralia.com.au/en/information-nsw/traditional-scoring-pattern-nsw. Tried: The site itself answered 404 on 2026-10-16. The Wayback Machine could not be reached through the proxy the same day.
• Guide Barr, Jenn. "Jenn's Corner #14: Playing in the World Series of Mahjong." reachmahjong.com — A first-hand account of play under the WSoM rules by the organiser of the 2008 riichi mini event. A search snippet says it judges the rules more luck-dependent than the others.
  Where: https://reachmahjong.com/?p=87. Tried: The site presents a self-signed TLS certificate (its own configuration), so it was not read.
• Encyclopedia Baidu Baike. 「中庸麻雀」 (item 5550214) — Its search snippet dates Kwan's system to 2006, another date to weigh against 1997, 2003, 2004 and 2007.
  Where: https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%B8%AD%E5%BA%B8%E9%BA%BB%E9%9B%80/5550214. Tried: Baidu Baike answered 403 on 2026-10-16.
• Guide Zhihu column. 「【自然麻将史观】1.5 中庸麻雀」 — A Chinese history-of-scoring series with a section on Zung Jung, likely to discuss its sources and dating.
  Where: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/655394262. Tried: Zhihu answered 403 on 2026-10-16.

Macau official casino mahjong 2

• Commercial Success Universe Group (HKEX 00487), annual and interim reports 2008-2019: the breakdown of gaming tables at the Ponte 16 casino — The operator's own count of mahjong tables at Ponte 16 (13 around 2015, by press accounts) and the years they were there. The DICJ publishes no count of tables by game
  Where: HKEXnews (www.hkexnews.hk), stock code 00487; the company's investor-relations site. Tried: Not reached on 2026-10-16. HKEXnews' title search is a script application, and GGRAsia's summary of the 2015 results (?p=30322, 31 March 2016) answered HTTP 403 from the site
• Organisation DICJ annual gaming statistics, gross revenue by game and number of tables: the pages before 2009 (mahjong figures for 2000-2003) and any count of tables by game — The pages for 2009-2026 have been read (dicj-gaming-statistics) and give revenue by game from 2004, but table counts only in total. The 2000-2003 mahjong figures that CEIC republishes, and any count of mahjong tables, are still unseen at the source
  Where: https://www.dicj.gov.mo/web/en/information/DadosEstat/ for the years before 2009; the DICJ's printed annual reports; Wayback captures of the old pages. Tried: On 2026-10-16 the report_en.xml files for 2002-2008 answered 404 at the current address (the site's own answer), and the Wayback CDX API reset the connection twice (on the proxy's or the site's side, not determined)

Mainland regionals 11

• Scholarship 陈海萍. 《推不倒的长城：中国「麻将热」面面观及其思考》. 长江文艺出版社, 1993 — A contemporary book on the early-1990s mahjong boom in China: the decade the wiki says the regional rules diverged.
  Where: Chinese libraries; cited by Chinese Wikipedia. Tried: Not online.
• Encyclopedia Carlisle, Rodney P., ed. Encyclopedia of Play in Today's Society. SAGE, 2009, p. 133 — Chinese Wikipedia's source for the 1949 ban.
  Where: SAGE Reference; academic libraries. Tried: Not openly available.
• Forum 知乎. 〈【地方麻将】聊聊地方麻将规则〉 (zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/690711853) — A player's survey of how local rule sets arise and multiply.
  Where: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/690711853. Tried: Zhihu returns a login wall to automated reads.
• Law The 1985 Ministry of Public Security document allowing mahjong as entertainment: 公安部. 《公安部关于公安机关不再干预麻将、纸牌的制造、销售问题的通知》, 16 October 1985 — The act that ended the post-1949 restrictions on making and selling tiles, after which the local games now played could be written down. Chen (2024) quotes it in full and The World of Chinese (2019) quotes it in English, but neither is the document itself.
  Where: 《中华人民共和国立法司法行政解释全书》 第3卷 (中国言实出版社, 1997), p. 3130, per Chen; subscription law databases such as pkulaw. Tried: Web searches for the exact title (2026-10-16) returned only Chen's essay. The notice was marked 不登报、不广播 (not to be published or broadcast), so no press copy is expected. The 1997 compilation and pkulaw were not tried.
• Law 公安部、工商行政管理总局、轻工业部、农业部、商业部、外贸部、供销合作总社. 《关于禁止制造、销售赌具问题的联合通知》, 8 May 1980, with its restatement 《公安部关于严禁赌博活动的通知》, 13 December 1983 — These bans on making and selling mahjong tiles stayed in force until 1985, which contradicts the wiki's late-1970s loosening.
  Where: 《工商行政通报》 1980年第7期; the 1983 notice in 《中华人民共和国立法司法行政解释全书》 第3卷 (1997), pp. 2299–2300, per Chen (2024). Tried: A web search for the 1980 title (2026-10-16) found only Chen's essay.
• Historical 国家体委. 《麻将牌座谈会纪要》, Fangshan, Beijing, 19–24 August 1996 — Minutes of the meeting where 20 mahjong experts from 9 provinces and 13 cities first proposed mahjong as a national competitive sport: the point at which people from the local games met, two years before the 1998 unified rules.
  Where: Cited from 李雪颜 (编著), 《麻将博弈》, 中国社会出版社, 2009, pp. 23–24, per Chen (2024). Tried: Known only from Chen's footnote; not searched for separately in this lean pass.
• Rulebook 张普生 (编著). 《怎样打麻将》. 安徽科学技术出版社, 1987 — One of the first mahjong books published in the PRC after 1985, by the organiser of the first sanctioned competition (Anhui, March 1986). With 《麻将牌游戏入门》 (河北科学技术出版社, 1986) and 《麻将入门》 (辽宁科学技术出版社, 1987), it is the kind of 1980s mainland text the Mahjong Wiki says it reasons from.
  Where: Chinese libraries; 215,000 copies printed by May 1990, per Chen (2024). Tried: Not in the Internet Archive's title search for 'ma jiang' (2026-10-16).
• Rulebook 《麻将技巧大全》. 合肥: 黄山书社, 1993 (Internet Archive majiangjiqiaodaq0000unse) — A 326-page mainland manual from the decade in which the wiki says the regional rules diverged; it may record which regional rules were played then.
  Where: https://archive.org/details/majiangjiqiaodaq0000unse (lending library, print-disabled access). Tried: The item is access-restricted, and its text file answered 500 to an anonymous request (2026-10-16). The same collection holds 《麻将读本》 (人民体育出版社, 1997) and 《麻将大全：竞赛规则详解》 (伊犁人民出版社, 1998).
• Official rules 四川天府新区麻将运动协会. 《四川麻将竞赛规则》, T/TFMJ 01—2024, issued 12 July 2024, in force 13 July 2024 — A mainland association's codification of the best-known local game as a group standard, and the only rules text from a provincial-level body for a local game that this pass found.
  Where: National group-standards platform: https://www.ttbz.org.cn/Home/PdfFileStreamGet/c3QsMTEyODcw. Tried: 2026-10-16: two connection resets on our side, then the PDF endpoint answered with the site's own 404 JSON ('资源不存在'). The standard's detail page sits behind the site's slider challenge (WEB 应用防火墙), and the Wayback Machine reset connections. Its details come only from search summaries.
• Official rules 四川天府新区麻将运动协会. 《麻将赛事组织管理规范》, T/TFMJ 3—2024, October 2024 — Search summaries say it lets regional events use group-standard rules (MCR, RCR, SCR) or local rules reformed for competition: a mainland standard for when a local game may be played in sanctioned events.
  Where: https://www.ttbz.org.cn/Home/PdfFileStreamGet/c3QsMTE4NDEx. Tried: 2026-10-16: connection resets on our side, then the site's own 404 JSON ('资源不存在'); the detail page is behind the site's slider challenge.
• Tournament rules 麻将运动竞赛训练中心. Competition regulations (竞赛规程) of the first 中国麻将公开赛, Hangzhou, 24–26 March 2023, for its 四川麻将 and 杭州麻将2V2 events — Tournament rules for two local games, run by a mainland body under MIL. This pass found no other written competition rules for Hangzhou mahjong.
  Where: The centre's WeChat channels and its mini-programme 智力运动考级. Tried: Web searches (2026-10-16) found only news reports; WeChat cannot be searched automatically.

Sichuan / Hunan / Tibetan 3

• Forum Vandeweghe, Jo, and Benjamin Boas. Posts on Tibetan style, rec.games.mahjong, September 2006 — Sloper's source for 'Tibetan style'; would show whether Boas meant a game from Tibet or his teaching method.
  Where: Google Groups archive of rec.games.mahjong. Tried: Google Groups refuses automated reads (HTTP 429 earlier in this project).
• Forum Andersen, Morten. Post on Sichuan style in Chengdu, rec.games.mahjong, November 2007 — The first-hand Chengdu report Sloper summarises.
  Where: Google Groups archive of rec.games.mahjong. Tried: Same as above.
• Encyclopedia riichi.wiki, "Tibet rules" — The riichi community's own page on the teaching method; may give its origin.
  Where: https://riichi.wiki/Tibet_rules. Tried: HTTP 403 to both curl and WebFetch.

Sichuan bloody rules 3

• Scholarship Wang, Di. "Mahjong and Urban Life …" International Journal of Asian Studies 11.2 (2014): 187-210, full text — The academic study of Chengdu mahjong around 2000; may date the bloody rules.
  Where: Cambridge Core (subscription). Tried: Only the abstract is open.
• Scholarship Wang, Di. "The Power of Mahjong." Chapter in The Teahouse under Socialism: The Decline and Renewal of Public Life in Chengdu, 1950-2000. Cornell University Press, 2018 — A book chapter on mahjong in Chengdu teahouses up to 2000, the decade the wiki says the bloody rules took hold.
  Where: De Gruyter / Cornell University Press; Project MUSE. Tried: The De Gruyter page returned nothing to automated reads.
• Guide Novikov, Vitaly. "Sichuan Mahjong? It's that simple!" (SBR_ENG_part_1.pdf), MahjongSoft — An English guide to Sichuan Bloody Rules from the MahjongSoft group.
  Where: https://mahjongsoft.com/files/SBR_ENG_part_1.pdf. Tried: mahjongsoft.com failed TLS by curl and returned 503 by WebFetch earlier in this project.

Sichuan 72-tile game 2

• Guide 知乎. 〈四川麻将技术论·第一章 规则与打法(1)基本规则〉 (zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/22612168) — Search snippets attribute to Sichuan rule guides the line that 'a very few places have only dots and bamboos, 72 tiles'; this is one candidate.
  Where: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/22612168. Tried: HTTP 403 to curl and WebFetch.
• Guide Chang, "Dragon" Shiang-Yu. Wonderful Taiwan Mah Jong. 2003, ISBN 957-41-1174-1 — The informant's own book; it may say something about Sichuan even if Sloper does not mention it.
  Where: Daja Mahjong ([email protected]), per Sloper; libraries. Tried: Not online.

Fuzhou style 2

• Forum 'Jesse'. Posts on Fuzhou style, rec.games.mahjong, 28 May and 1-2 June 2003 — The source of the 132-tile, thirteen-tile account; would show what game he was describing.
  Where: Google Groups archive of rec.games.mahjong. Tried: Google Groups refuses automated reads (HTTP 429 earlier in this project).
• Guide 簡而清 (Kan Yi-ching). 《開檯》. ISBN 962-17-4906-9 — The one printed source Chinese Wikipedia cites for the Fuzhou rules.
  Where: Hong Kong libraries. Tried: Not online.

Fujian style 2

• Encyclopedia Baidu Baike. 〈泉州麻将〉 and 〈厦门麻将〉 — Encyclopedia entries for the two main Minnan games; search snippets give Quanzhou a sixteen-tile hand, which would settle the hand size for southern Fujian.
  Where: https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%B3%89%E5%B7%9E%E9%BA%BB%E5%B0%86/6395736. Tried: Baidu Baike returns an empty shell to automated reads.
• Forum Jacques, Chris. Report on Fujian style to Tom Sloper (undated) — The single source of the 124-tile, thirteen-tile account.
  Where: Sloper's correspondence; possibly rec.games.mahjong. Tried: Not found online.

Beijing style 2

• Commercial JJ比赛 (jj.cn). 〈北京麻将游戏规则〉, 16 July 2012 — A second platform's Beijing rules, to check the kong scoring.
  Where: https://www.jj.cn/news/320/20120716143900024737.shtml. Tried: Empty to curl; the WebFetch summary was garbled and not usable as a reading.
• Guide 新浪游戏. 〈北京麻将（吃碰提）特色教学〉, 3 August 2007 — A 2007 account of the 吃碰提 form, earlier than the other sources.
  Where: http://games.sina.com.cn/o/z/gc/2007-08-03/1336265051.shtml. Tried: The page returned almost nothing.

Japanese classical / arushiiaru 4

• Historical Japan Mahjong Federation 日本麻雀聯盟, 『麻雀タイムス』 (periodical) — The Federation's own paper, the likeliest place for its first published rules and their date (the Mahjong Wiki says 1931).
  Where: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I000007137421. Tried: NDL Search record read 2026-10-08; print only.
• Historical 大日本麻雀聯盟, 『大日聯タイムス』 (1934-) — The merged federation's paper from 1934: the rules as standardised after the 1932 merger.
  Where: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I034444131. Tried: NDL Search record read 2026-10-08; print only.
• Journalism 『太陽』 (Heibonsha), May 1974, roundtable 「大正よもやま話」 — The source of Asami's account of mahjong's arrival in Tokyo and Kikuchi Kan.
  Where: Print.. Tried: Print only.
• Journalism Osaka Mainichi, 12 May 1931, 「競技の入場料 課税は認めぬ：ゴルフ、麻雀の課税は許可」 — A Home Ministry decision on taxing mahjong in the Federation's early years.
  Where: https://cir.nii.ac.jp/crid/1390025020465776128. Tried: The CiNii record answered 202 with an empty page (2026-10-08).

Houchi rules 6

• Official rules Amano Daizō, 「立直麻雀標準規定」, serialised in the Hōchi Shinbun 報知新聞, 11 November - 5 December 1952 — The rules as first published; the books of 1954 and 1956 print a version dated 1953.
  Where: The Hōchi Shinbun's archive, or a library holding the paper on microfilm.. Tried: Not digitised; NDL Search finds only books (2026-10-08).
• Rulebook Amano Daizō, 『リーチ麻雀を始める人のために』 (1954), appendix p. 217: 昭和二十八年度制定 立直麻雀標準規定 — The earliest book printing of the standard, with Amano's own date for it.
  Where: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2466661. Tried: Contents list read 2026-10-08; the pages are open to registered users of the NDL's individuals' service.
• Rulebook 井出洋介 監修, 『平成版 麻雀新報知ルール : Q&A付』, 報知新聞社, 1997 (ISBN 4-8319-0118-0) — The newspaper's own later edition; Japanese Wikipedia cites p. 22 for the 1952 rules' influence.
  Where: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I000002615147. Tried: NDL record read 2026-10-08; the digital copy is for NDL premises only.
• Historical 大隈秀夫, 『立直一代 : 日本麻雀裏面史 天野大三の78年』, 竹書房, 1983 — The biography behind Japanese Wikipedia's account of the police report and Amano's break with the Federation.
  Where: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I000001652706. Tried: NDL record read 2026-10-08; print only.
• Journalism 『近代麻雀』 vol. 30 no. 7 (March 2008), p. 14, 「麻雀新撰組 in the 70s'」 — Japanese Wikipedia's source for Amano setting riichi down in 1952.
  Where: Print (Takeshobo).. Tried: Print only.
• Guide 大隈秀夫, 『マージャン金言集』, 光文社, 1974, pp. 162-163 — Japanese Wikipedia's source for dating the third-tile dora to 1953-54, after the Houchi rules.
  Where: Print.. Tried: Print only.

Tokyo rules 5

• Official rules Amano Daizō, 「オール一飜縛り規程」 (the Tokyo rules), as printed in Osakabe Shin'ichi 刑部進一, 『標準麻雀の第一歩』 (Kin'ensha, 1958), appendix from p. 208 — The nearest text of the rules found. It would settle the new yaku, the furiten rule, zoroba and the mangan grades
  Where: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2486074. Tried: Contents list read 2026-10-08. The pages are open to registered users of the NDL's individuals' service, a restriction the site sets
• Rulebook Amano Daizō, 『麻雀の高等戦術』 (Ikeda Shoten, 1958), chapter 6 「オール一飜縛り」 from p. 107 and 「東京ルールの規程」 at p. 216 — Amano's own history of the rule and the Tokyo rules' furiten provision
  Where: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2485200. Tried: Contents list read 2026-10-08. The pages are open to registered users of the NDL's individuals' service
• Rulebook Amano Daizō, 『新しい麻雀の打ち方 : 入門からリーチ戦術まで』, Kin'ensha, 1957, 330 pp. — Amano's book from the year the rules were issued; reissued in 1958 and 1959
  Where: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I000000971892. Tried: NDL Search lists the book with no digital copy (2026-10-08)
• Journalism Amano Daizō, 「麻雀（東京ルール）」, 『面白倶楽部』 (Kōbunsha), February, March, May and July 1958 — The rules explained in a popular magazine month by month while they were current
  Where: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1834075 (and pids 1834076, 1834078, 1834080). Tried: Contents lists read 2026-10-08. The NDL restricts the pages to its own premises
• Official rules The first publication of the 「オール一飜縛り規程」 in 1957 — None of the sources read says where or when in 1957 the rules first appeared
  Where: Unknown. The likeliest places are Amano's 1957 columns in 面白倶楽部 (pids 1834070-1834073) and his 1957 books. Tried: NDL Search and CiNii Research (2026-10-08) gave no separate publication

Modern rules 5

• Official rules Amano Daizō / Nihon Haikiin 日本牌棋院, 「現代ルール」 (1967), as first issued — The rules themselves, to settle what they introduced and whether ura-dora was self-draw only and counted the shown tile, and oka 27,000/30,000, as Japanese Wikipedia's uncited footnotes say.
  Where: Unknown: no source read says where the rules first appeared. Amano's books of 1967-71 are the likeliest place in print.. Tried: NDL Search finds no 1967-68 title naming the rules (2026-10-08).
• Rulebook Amano Daizō and Aoyama Kei, 『「現代ルール」による図解麻雀入門』, 梧桐書院, 1971 — The earliest book found that names the modern rules. Japanese Wikipedia cites it (as 新現代ルール, p. 52) for ura-dora reaching Kantō in the Shōwa 40s.
  Where: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/14874285. Tried: NDL record read 2026-10-08. The digital copy can be read only on NDL premises and is not in the individuals' service; remote copying is allowed.
• Rulebook Amano Daizō's books of 1967: 『麻雀 : 戦術の基礎理論』 (天元書房), 『麻雀に強くなる本』 (文海堂) and 『麻雀の打ち方戦い方』 (東都書房) — Published the year of the rules, so any of them may print them.
  Where: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/14879531, https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/14879599, https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/14879530. Tried: NDL item records read 2026-10-08: readable on NDL premises only, and the contents lists say only 目次.
• Rulebook Amano Daizō and Aoyama Kei, 『新現代ルールによる図解麻雀入門』, 梧桐書院, 1979; edition of 1989 as 『図解麻雀入門 : 新「現代ルール」による』 — The source Japanese Wikipedia names for Amano's life and for its scoring details; it should date the change from the modern rules to the new modern rules.
  Where: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000001-I40221103740645. Tried: NDL Search record found 2026-10-08; no digital copy is listed.
• Historical 大隈秀夫, 『立直一代 : 日本麻雀裏面史 天野大三の78年』, 竹書房, 1983 — The biography behind Japanese Wikipedia's account of Amano's rulesets, 1967 among them.
  Where: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I000001652706. Tried: Not tried again; the Houchi rules pass found it in print only (2026-10-08).

Modern riichi / yonma 11

• Official rules Saikouisen 最高位戦日本プロ麻雀協会, official rules — One of the large Japanese professional leagues, and one of the nine rulesets the WRC rules were drawn from.
  Where: https://www.saikouisen.com/. Tried: The research environment's gateway answered 502, and a second fetcher got 503 (2026-10-06).
• Official rules Korean Mahjong League 한국마작연맹, rules — The riichi body in South Korea, and one of the nine rulesets the WRC rules were drawn from.
  Where: https://kml.or.kr/. Tried: 403 to automated requests (2026-10-06).
• Journalism Kindai Mahjong 近代麻雀, vol. 472 (September 2004), the まんトリ feature (story Fukuchi Makoto, art Ōtsubo Maki) — The interview finding that Mizuno Maruichi made the first red tiles in 1964, on which Asami Ryō and Japanese Wikipedia both rely. They name the magazine differently: 月刊近代麻雀 and 近代麻雀オリジナル.
  Where: Print: Takeshobo, September 2004.. Tried: Print only.
• Historical Ōkuma Hideo 大隈秀夫, 『マージャン金言集』 (Kōbunsha, 1974), pp. 162-163 — Japanese Wikipedia quotes it on red threes, and red fives of circles, as dora 'west of Kansai': the earliest dated printed mention of red tiles found.
  Where: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I000001294883. Tried: Print only.
• Historical Amano Daizō 天野大三, 『「現代ルール」による図解麻雀入門』 (Gotō Shoin, 1971) — The designer's own book on his modern rules, published the year after the chart's date. Whether it has red fives would settle what 'modern riichi, 1970' can mean.
  Where: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I000001297056. Tried: Print only.
• Journalism Matsutani Minoru, "Mah-jongg ancient, progressive", Japan Times, 15 June 2010 — English Wikipedia's source for 7.6 million players and about 8,900 parlours in Japan in 2008.
  Where: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2010/06/15/reference/mah-jongg-ancient-progressive/. Tried: Paywalled: the article body is not in the page, and a second fetcher got 402 (2026-10-06).
• Scholarship Ebashi Takashi 江橋崇, 『牌が語る麻雀の歴史：野口恭一郎と麻雀博物館設立の物語』 (Goma Books, 2023) — A historian's account of mahjong through its tiles and of the Mahjong Museum's founding: the likeliest source to date red tiles from surviving sets.
  Where: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I033081901. Tried: Print only.
• Collection Mahjong Museum 麻雀博物館, 『麻雀の歴史と文化：麻雀博物館図録』 (Takeshobo, 2005) — The museum's catalogue of its collection, which should show when red tiles appear in Japanese sets.
  Where: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I000007942516. Tried: Print only.
• Scholarship Kuroki Masaki 黒木真生, 『麻雀プロ団体分裂と闘争の歴史』 (Takeshobo, 2026) — A history of the professional organisations' splits, which is the history of why their rules differ.
  Where: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I034616800. Tried: Print only.
• Encyclopedia Namu Wiki, 리치마작 (riichi mahjong) — The fullest Korean-language account of riichi and of how it is organised in Korea.
  Where: https://namu.wiki/w/%EB%A6%AC%EC%B9%98%EB%A7%88%EC%9E%91. Tried: 403 to automated requests, as were the riichi pages of thewiki.kr and Libre Wiki (2026-10-06).
• Encyclopedia Baidu Baike, 日本麻将 (Japanese mahjong) — The mainland Chinese encyclopedia's account of riichi.
  Where: https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E9%BA%BB%E5%B0%86. Tried: 403, and the connection was cut (2026-10-06).

Sanma 61

• Official rules 日本三人打麻雀協会 (SDA). 「SDA公式ルール」 (SDA official rules). — SDA's general three-player rules, separate from its tournament rules. It would show which North and tsumo conventions the association itself endorses.
  Where: https://mahjong-sda.com/rule-official/. Tried: 2026-10-06 and 2026-10-07: HTTP 200 from the site, but the page body has no rule text (only menus and sidebar). The WordPress REST API (https://mahjong-sda.com/wp-json/wp/v2/pages?slug=rule-official) returned the hosting company's own 403 block page (XSERVER) on 2026-10-07. The refusal is the site host's.
• Official rules 日本プロ麻雀連盟. Three-player rules (「日本プロ麻雀連盟の三人麻雀ルール」), as referred to in the 2012 lesson column. — JPML says its three-player rules are used on Ron2, in the Mahjong Triathlon and on Mahjong Fight Club. A full text would fix the JPML strand (North as guest wind, equal tsumo payment) at source.
  Where: ma-jan.or.jp (JPML); or ask JPML directly. Tried: 2026-10-07: JPML 競技ルール page (https://www.ma-jan.or.jp/activity/game_rule.html) answers 200 but holds almost no rule text in its HTML. Site searches for 三人麻雀, 三麻 and トライアスロン ルール found only columns and reports. No three-player rulebook found.
• Commercial 天鳳 (Tenhou). The announcement that introduced three-player ranked play (c. 2006-2008). — Would date when the most influential online nukidora sanma began. The manual only shows that three-player ranked play existed before 2008-02-25.
  Where: blog.tenhou.net archives 2006-2008; tenhou.net. Tried: 2026-10-06/07: http://blog.tenhou.net/archives/200703-1.html (and other 2007 months) return the blog host's own 404 page ('リクエストされたページが見つかりません'). The blog's own archive navigation begins in 2016-02. The tenhou.net manual and ranking pages give no start date. web.archive.org not tried (known to drop connections from here).
• Commercial 東風荘 (Tonpūsō). Rules of the third server (三人麻雀), service 1997-2018. — Probably the earliest large online sanma service. Its rules would show the 1990s/2000s online convention.
  Where: http://mj.giganet.net/ (defunct). Tried: 2026-10-07: the domain 301-redirects to the unrelated https://giganet.net/ (the site's own redirect). The archive.org availability API answered 429 (archive.org's rate limit). web.archive.org not tried.
• Commercial 麻雀一番街 (Riichi City). Official three-player rules. — A current major app with ranked three-player play.
  Where: https://www.mahjong-jp.com/home (and in-app help). Tried: 2026-10-07: HTTP 200, but the page is a JavaScript-only app with no rule text in the HTML. The app bundles were not taken apart. Rules appear to be in-app only.
• Commercial KONAMI. Press release or operator notice for 麻雀格闘倶楽部5 (2006) adding national three-player play (全国三人打ち麻雀). — Would confirm, from Konami itself, the 2006 date that Japanese Wikipedia gives.
  Where: Konami press archive; 4Gamer / Game Watch 2006 news. Tried: Not tried in this pass (time).
• Encyclopedia Mahjong Wiki. "Three Player Mahjong" (rules:three-player), dated 2010-06-24 in en Wikipedia's citation — The source of en Wikipedia's 'Korean/Japanese' vanilla rules (bamboo 2-8 removed, seasons removed), which the repository attributed to sanma. Reading it would show exactly which game it described.
  Where: http://mahjong.wikidot.com/rules:three-player (live 404); Wayback captures. Tried: 2026-10-07: live page answered 404 (site's own). The archive.org availability API answered 429 (archive.org's rate limit). web.archive.org connections were reset and the tunnel closed mid-exchange (failure on this side, logged by the agent proxy). WebFetch refused web.archive.org.
• Guide David Hurley. "Japanese Three Player Mahjong" (japanese-mahjong.com/3pmjintro.html) and "Three Player Mahjong News 2004" (3pmjnews04.html) — The only source en Wikipedia gives for its Japanese sanma section; Sloperama FAQ 13C also points to it. An English 2000s account of Japanese sanma rules.
  Where: http://japanese-mahjong.com/3pmjintro.html; Wayback 20130921213152 and 20100406025253; http://www.japanese-mahjong.com/3pmjnews04.html (Wayback 20120305150555). Tried: 2026-10-07: the host name does not resolve (curl: could not resolve host; DNS failure, domain apparently gone). Wayback unreachable from here (connection reset, this side). WebFetch refused web.archive.org. archive.ph connection closed mid-exchange (this side).
• Historical 村石利夫 Muraishi Toshio. 『麻雀101話 : 東南西北ものしり事典』 光風社書店, 1976 (NDL R100000002-I000001304780; digitised as pid 14881802) — Asami's source for Shikoku sanma devised c. 1944 by 升田実 of Tokushima and for the c. 1975 Shikoku rules (north as nukidora, no chi). It is the earliest dated claim for modern sanma's origin.
  Where: National Diet Library; NDL Digital Collections pid 14881802 (viewable only on NDL premises; not in the individual transmission service). Tried: 2026-10-07: NDL Search record read; the IIIF manifest is not public (restricted).
• Historical 日本競技(麻雀)倶楽部. 『麻雀の競技法と其秘訣』 岡村書店 (Asami gives 1 June 1930; an NDL Search record from a prefectural library gives 1936.10: R100000001-I23211001010080903) — Asami's source for the two pre-war three-player rule types (A: north removed; B: one suit and winds removed, six flowers added, pon but no chi). It would date the no-chi rule to 1930.
  Where: Prefectural library holding per NDL Search; NDL Digital not found. Tried: 2026-10-07: NDL OpenSearch title search found only this regional record; not digitised publicly.
• Historical 米沢章 Yonezawa Akira. 『標準麻雀競技法とその作戦』 朝日新聞社 (NDL editions 昭和2 and 昭和3; Asami cites S4/11); and 柳河卓人『麻雀実戦妙技法』盛陽堂 1930 — Cited by Asami as pre-war books that mention three-player rules.
  Where: NDL Digital Collections (Yonezawa pids 1027927/1029998: library/individual transmission only); Yanagawa not found in NDL. Tried: 2026-10-07: NDL Search records read; IIIF manifests restricted ('checkResult NG'); NDL lab API answered 500 (not public). 柳河卓人 and 麻雀実戦妙技法 returned 0 results in NDL OpenSearch.
• Rulebook 伊藤拓馬 Itō Takuma. 『賭けずに楽しむ日本の賭博ゲーム』 立東舎 (ja Wikipedia gives 立東社), 2015, ISBN 9784845625918, pp. 119, 122-123 — The only printed source ja Wikipedia's 東天紅 article cites, for the Akasaka parlour origin and the 112-tile and red-five variants.
  Where: NDL R100000002-I026353160; bookshops. Tried: 2026-10-07: NDL OpenSearch record found; no online text.
• Rulebook Jelte Rep. The Great Mahjong Book: History, Lore, and Play. Tuttle, 2007. ISBN 9780804837194 — Cited by en Wikipedia for the Korean/Japanese three-player game and the claim that three-player has its own rules.
  Where: Libraries; Open Library lists it. Tried: 2026-10-07: Open Library search found the record; Google Books not tried (shared-quota 429 known); no full text.
• Rulebook Amy Lo. The Book of Mah Jong: An Illustrated Guide. Tuttle, 2001. ISBN 9780804833028 — Cited by en Wikipedia for whole suits being removed in some three-player variants.
  Where: Libraries. Tried: 2026-10-07: Open Library record found; no full text.
• Rulebook Eleanor Noss Whitney. A Mah Jong Handbook: How to Play, Score, and Win. Tuttle, 1964 — Cited by en Wikipedia for three-player table rules. An early English book on Japanese mahjong.
  Where: Internet Archive lending copies mahjonghandbookh00whit (1964) and later editions. Tried: 2026-10-07: archive.org metadata says access-restricted-item true (lending, login required).
• Rulebook Shozo Kanai and Margaret Farrell. Mah Jong for Beginners, based on the rules and regulations of the Mah Jong Association of Japan. Tuttle, 1952/1955 — Probably the 'Mah Jong for Beginners' en Wikipedia cites. A 1950s English account of Japanese rules that may give a three-player method.
  Where: Internet Archive lending copies mahjongforbeginn0000unse (1955) and mahjongforbeginn0000shoz (1958). Tried: 2026-10-07: archive.org metadata says access-restricted-item true (login required).
• Guide Sammaniax (サンマニアックス), a three-player mahjong website with a 分布図 (distribution map) of sanma rule variants — Cited by Asami Ryō (his16) and by 雀のお宿 as the main study of regional sanma rules, and credited with spreading the name 'サンマ'.
  Where: Unknown URL (probably a dead personal site). Tried: 2026-10-07: WebSearch (extended) for 'Sammaniax サンマ 分布図 三人麻雀' found nothing.
• Encyclopedia ニコニコ大百科 「三人麻雀」 (Wikidata P6900) — An encyclopedia entry linked from the Wikidata item.
  Where: https://dic.nicovideo.jp/a/%E4%B8%89%E4%BA%BA%E9%BA%BB%E9%9B%80. Tried: 2026-10-07: 403 from CloudFront ('The request could not be satisfied'), the site's own refusal.
• Encyclopedia ピクシブ百科事典 「三人麻雀」 — Encyclopedia entry surfaced by search.
  Where: https://dic.pixiv.net/a/%E4%B8%89%E4%BA%BA%E9%BA%BB%E9%9B%80. Tried: 2026-10-07: 403 with server cloudflare, the site's own refusal.
• Encyclopedia riichi.wiki 'Sanma' — The English riichi wiki's page on three-player play (the existing riichi-wiki observation is from its Japanese mahjong page).
  Where: https://riichi.wiki/Sanma. Tried: 2026-10-07: 403, the site's own refusal of automated readers.
• Guide Nanette Pasquarello, 'Nan's Mah Jong Notes' (homepage.mac.com/zenblaster/mj/mah_how.html, Wayback 2003) and chevroncars.com 'The history of mahjong' (Wayback 2012) — Minor references of en Wikipedia's three-player article (point systems; suit removal).
  Where: web.archive.org captures 20030626202552 and 20120429074008. Tried: 2026-10-07: not attempted individually after web.archive.org connections were reset repeatedly from this side.
• Guide Reach Mahjong (Garthe Nelson?) blog, "Osaka 3-Player Mahjong" — English first-hand account of Osaka parlour sanma (35,000/40,000, no 100/500 sticks, Osaka rules compared with Tokyo Tōtenkō), per search lead.
  Where: https://reachmahjong.com/osaka-3-player-mahjong/. Tried: 2026-10-07: curl failed TLS (site serves a self-signed certificate; earlier fetch of the forum got a DreamHost 'Site not found' page) — site-side; did not bypass TLS. WebFetch returned HTTP 503 from the site.
• Encyclopedia 麻雀ローカルルールWiki (atwiki): 関西三麻 (pages/4311) and 三麻の北風牌の扱い (pages/310) — Community wiki pages on Kansai sanma and regional handling of North (e.g. North as flower in northern Kantō, common yakuhai in Nara).
  Where: https://w.atwiki.jp/mahjlocal/pages/4311.html ; https://w.atwiki.jp/mahjlocal/pages/310.html. Tried: 2026-10-07: Cloudflare 'Just a moment' challenge from the site; not bypassed.
• Guide 麻雀College 「抜きドラとは？三人麻雀での北の扱い」 — Guide on nukidora and North handling.
  Where: https://mahjongcollege.com/rules/4672/. Tried: 2026-10-07: site's own nginx 403 Forbidden.
• Historical 木下裕章 『麻雀屋からマージャン倶楽部へ』 (2012) — Book by the former head of the national mahjong parlour union, cited by note1990 for the 1985 Fūeihō revision that ended Bū mahjong; may document the shift of Osaka parlours to sanma.
  Where: Unknown publisher (possibly union-published); not found in NDL OpenSearch by title or creator.. Tried: 2026-10-07: NDL OpenSearch title= and any= queries returned 0; creator=木下裕章 returned unrelated namesakes.
• Journalism 麻雀新聞 2015年5月号 (第三回鳳凰杯) and 2016年8月号 (第四回鳳凰杯) print articles — Trade-paper articles on the Kansai store-vs-store sanma tournament; only contents listings are online.
  Where: Majan Shinbun (MCJ Co.; paper suspended 2025-11, continued in 『麻雀界』). Tried: 2026-10-07: read the web back-number page (contents only); no article text online.
• Forum Reddit r/Mahjong thread 'Sanma Japanese Riichi variant 3 player dora north' (7osl1x, 2018) — English discussion of sanma North rules referenced in McGill blog comments.
  Where: https://www.reddit.com/r/Mahjong/comments/7osl1x/. Tried: 2026-10-07: reddit answers 403 to automated readers (earlier fetch got an app shell with no content) and the search tool refuses reddit.com.
• Forum BoardGameGeek threads on sanma / three-player riichi — English hobbyist discussion.
  Where: boardgamegeek.com. Tried: 2026-10-07: Cloudflare challenge page from BGG (site's refusal).
• Guide YouTube rules explainers: 雀サクッTV 「関西三麻を覚えよう！！」 (LVTWnaU_0Gg); daisenの三人麻雀専門チャンネル 「初心者でも大丈夫！三人麻雀の基本的なルール」 (sPTxdc8DMn8); たkる麻雀グッズ研究所 「手積み３人麻雀（サンマ）の始め方」 (W3PqDcVmfJY); The Mahjong Line 'Can you play mahjong with three players?' (eFZ4Ift8dgQ); Riichi Mahjong Central 'New 3 Ma/3 Player Mahjong Rule!? Enter the 3M Kingdom' (2jhUHTMHNvI); 三人麻雀フリー雀荘のルール「関西サンマ」を優しく解説！ (400N7S256J0) — Rules explainers and broadcasts; video cannot be watched here and pages have no readable text.
  Where: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<id>. Tried: 2026-10-07: titles/channels confirmed via YouTube oEmbed; watch pages return Google's 'unusual traffic' captcha (site's refusal).
• Historical Chronicling America / Papers Past search for three-handed mah-jongg — Check 1920s Western three-handed mahjong mentions (not Japanese sanma).
  Where: chroniclingamerica.loc.gov ; paperspast.natlib.govt.nz. Tried: 2026-10-07: Chronicling America returned a Cloudflare challenge then 308 to loc.gov; Papers Past returned an Incapsula bot challenge — both site-side.
• Historical 林茂光 (or 日本競技麻雀倶楽部). 『麻雀競技法とその秘訣』. 四六書院, 昭和4 (1929) and 昭和5 (1930). Asami cites it as 「麻雀競技法と其秘訣（日本競技麻雀倶楽部・岡村書店S5/6/1）」 for the prewar A/B sanma types. — Asami's named source for the prewar three-player rules (North removed; or a suit and winds removed with flowers, pon but no chii). The no-chii rule would be the earliest known if confirmed.
  Where: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I000000773779 and https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I000000773785. Tried: 2026-10-07/08: NDL OpenSearch (title 麻雀競技法と其秘訣 = 0; 麻雀競技法 found the 四六書院 records); no NDL Digital PID in the records; not among the five public-domain mahjong books in NDL Lab. Publisher discrepancy (岡村書店 vs 四六書院) unresolved.
• Historical 米沢章. 『標準麻雀 : 競技法とその作戦』 / 『標準麻雀競技法とその作戦』. 朝日新聞社, 1927 and 1928. NDL pid 1027927, 1029998. — Cited by Asami (as S4/11) as an early text mentioning three-player play.
  Where: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1027927 ; https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1029998. Tried: 2026-10-07: NDL Digital IIIF manifest returns {"checkResult": "NG"} (not public; registered-user or in-library access only). NDL's own restriction, not a failure here.
• Historical 柳河卓人. 『麻雀実戦妙技法』. 盛陽堂, 昭和5 (1930). — Cited by Asami as describing prewar sanma rules.
  Where: NDL (not found). Tried: 2026-10-07: NDL OpenSearch title 麻雀実戦妙技法, 麻雀妙技法, creator 柳河卓人: 0 results.
• Rulebook 村石利夫. 『麻雀101話 : 東南西北ものしり事典』. 光風社書店, 1976. — Asami's source for Shikoku sanma being devised c. Shōwa 19 (1944) by Masuda Minoru of Tokushima, and for the c. 1975 Shikoku rules (North nukidora, no chii, 45,000/50,000).
  Where: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I000001304780. Tried: 2026-10-07: NDL record found; no digital copy offered online.
• Journalism 『週刊読売』 1973年2月24日号 p.24 「公式「三人マージャン」の全魅力!」; 3月3日号 p.138; 3月10日号 p.144 「三人麻雀の現行3ルールの徹底的解剖」; 3月31日号 p.42 「決定版「三人麻雀」賛成･反対」 (山口瞳, 吉行淳之介, 大橋巨泉, 村石利夫). — A 1973 campaign for an 'official' sanma and a survey of three current rule sets: the best contemporary evidence for sanma's rules and spread in the early 1970s.
  Where: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1813820 , /1813821 , /1813822 , /1813825. Tried: 2026-10-07/08: tables of contents read via NDL Digital item API; the issues are restricted (manifest checkResult NG). NDL's restriction.
• Journalism 天野大三 「麻雀上達法」. 『面白倶楽部』 9(7), 光文社, 1956年7月, p.219. — NDL Search matched this issue on サンマ 麻雀 in full text; a 1956 article by Amano Daizō (father of the modern rules) that may mention three-player play.
  Where: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1834059. Tried: 2026-10-07: restricted (checkResult NG); which page matched is not shown.
• Journalism 森光子 「三人麻雀で一眼散」. 『新評』 19(5), 1972年5月, p.212. — 1972 magazine essay on three-player mahjong.
  Where: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1807975. Tried: 2026-10-07: table of contents read; issue restricted (NG).
• Rulebook 伊藤拓馬. 『賭けずに楽しむ日本の賭博ゲーム』. 立東舎, 2015. ISBN 9784845625918, pp. 119-123. — Cited by ja.wikipedia 東天紅 for the Akasaka parlour origin and Tōtenkō rules.
  Where: https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I026353160. Tried: 2026-10-07: NDL record found (any=東天紅 麻雀); in copyright, not online; Google Books API 429.
• Rulebook 栗原安行. 『おぼえる麻雀/3人麻雀の遊び方』. 泰光堂, 1979.03 (as listed in Asami's library list lib27). — Possibly the first Japanese book devoted to three-player play (the 3-mahjong.com site says there were no textbooks).
  Where: Asami's list https://mjradio.web.fc2.com/majansite-mirror/lib27.html ; NDL. Tried: 2026-10-07: NDL OpenSearch creator 栗原安行 (104 hits, first 10 seen), title 3人麻雀の遊び方 (0), おぼえる麻雀 (no match). Not located.
• Guide Sammaniax (www.sammaniax.com), a site with a 分布図 (distribution map) of sanma rule variants, cited by Asami (his16) and by suzume.hakata21.com. — Described as the detailed survey of regional sanma variants.
  Where: http://www.sammaniax.com/. Tried: 2026-10-07: DNS does not resolve (curl: Could not resolve host). archive.org availability API answered 429; Wayback connection reset (this side). Not in the fc2 mirror (gld4.html 404).
• Rulebook Rep, Jelte. The Great Mahjong Book: History, Lore, and Play. Tuttle, 2007 (chapter 'Japan'). — Cited by en.wikipedia 'Three-player mahjong' for its 'vanilla' rules; may say which country's three-player game it describes.
  Where: https://archive.org/details/greatmahjongbook0000repj. Tried: 2026-10-07: Internet Archive lending-only (printdisabled); djvu.txt redirects, search-inside answers 'Item not available'.
• Encyclopedia 最完整的日本麻將中文維基百科 (wiki.lingshangkaihua.com), article 三人麻将 / 三人麻將 — The fullest Chinese-language wiki on riichi mahjong. Search snippets show a dedicated sanma article covering north-as-yakuhai, north-as-dora and 拔北.
  Where: https://wiki.lingshangkaihua.com/mediawiki/index.php/zh/%E4%B8%89%E4%BA%BA%E9%BA%BB%E5%B0%86. Tried: 2026-10-07. curl failed TLS verification (SSL certificate problem: unable to get local issuer certificate). This looks like the site's incomplete certificate chain, not the proxy, since other hosts verify fine; I did not disable verification. WebFetch got HTTP 503 Service Unavailable from the site.
• Encyclopedia 百度百科「三人麻将」(item 6981529) and「日本麻将」(item 5292909) — Baidu Baike entries on three-player mahjong and on Japanese mahjong.
  Where: https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%B8%89%E4%BA%BA%E9%BA%BB%E5%B0%86/6981529. Tried: 2026-10-07. 日本麻将: the first curl died mid-exchange on this side (proxy recentRelayFailures: tunnel closed code 1006 for baike.baidu.com:443), and a retry got the site's own 403. 三人麻将: the site's own 403.
• Forum 知乎: question「三人日本麻将规则和四人的有哪些区别？」(300339195) and column「【地方麻将】那些改变麻将玩法的规则（三）—— 三人麻将」(p/20920031944), also「三麻役种和牌率预测」(p/677136726) — Chinese community discussion of sanma rules. A search snippet says the column compares Japanese sanma with 卡五星 and Korean and Malaysian three-player games, and says Korean mahjong is related to the Japanese.
  Where: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/20920031944. Tried: 2026-10-07: the site's own 403 to curl, for both the question and the column.
• Encyclopedia Mahjong Wiki (Fandom) zh「拔北」 — Chinese wiki article on the north-pulling rule.
  Where: https://mahjong.fandom.com/zh/wiki/%E6%8B%94%E5%8C%97. Tried: 2026-10-07: the site's own 403 to curl.
• Guide Bilibili column「【正经科普向】颇为魔性的日麻古役与地方役种（2）」(cv2650901) — A search snippet says it describes a sanma-only old yaku, 拔北大四喜.
  Where: https://bilibili.com/read/cv2650901. Tried: 2026-10-07. The page is JS-rendered and curl got an empty shell. api.bilibili.com/x/article/view answered -404 for the id (and -509 rate limit for cv21982265). WebFetch also saw an empty page.
• Encyclopedia Korean wikis on Japanese sanma: 나무위키「3인 마작」, 리브레 위키「리치마작/3인작」, 더위키「3인 마작」; and the arca.live 마작 채널 post「초심을 위한 삼마 입문」 — Dedicated Korean-language pages on Japanese three-player riichi (nukidora, 8 dead-wall tiles, 1m/9m dora) exist, according to search snippets.
  Where: https://librewiki.net/wiki/%EB%A6%AC%EC%B9%98%EB%A7%88%EC%9E%91/3%EC%9D%B8%EC%9E%91. Tried: 2026-10-07: the site's own 403 to curl from librewiki.net, thewiki.kr and arca.live; Namu Wiki is known to answer 403 and was not retried. I did not try to get around these refusals.
• Law 大阪府風俗営業等の規制及び業務の適正化等に関する法律施行条例 (originally 風俗営業等取締法施行条例, 昭和34年大阪府条例第6号; amended 昭和59年条例第57号, in force 13 Feb 1985), especially its pre-1985 text on prizes in mahjong parlours — It would show whether Osaka law before 1985 allowed or tolerated prizes in mahjong parlours (the legal basis of bū/B-rule settlement), and whether Osaka's post-1985 ordinance differs from Tokyo's 'no prizes for games between customers' duty.
  Where: https://www.pref.osaka.lg.jp/houbun/reiki/reiki_honbun/k201RG00001068.html (current text); pre-1985 text in 大阪府公報 or a printed 大阪府例規集. Tried: 2026-10-07/08: curl to pref.osaka.lg.jp failed with 'Recv failure: Connection reset by peer' (a failure on this side or in the relay, not a page from the site); WebFetch reached the page, and its summary reported a 1959 origin, commencement 13 Feb 1985, a grandfather clause for 'まあじやん遊技場' structures and no 賞品 provision. That is a summary, not a reading, so it is not reported as a source.
• Law 風俗営業等の規制及び業務の適正化等に関する法律施行規則 (昭和60年国家公安委員会規則第1号) as originally promulgated in the 官報, January/February 1985, art. on mahjong play fees — The current rule caps fees per hour (600 yen per person or 2400 yen per table for automatic tables). The original 1985 basis matters for the claim that fast games (bū, sanma) charged per game breached hourly fee limits, and for any Tokyo-specific practice.
  Where: 官報 1985 (NDL Digital Collections, 官報 is restricted for 1985); 法令全書 昭和60年. Tried: 2026-10-07: e-Gov holds only the current text (already read by g4); the NDL hourei.ndl.go.jp search is a JavaScript application and returned no readable text to curl; not pursued further.
• Scholarship 伊藤拓馬 Itō Takuma. 『賭けずに楽しむ日本の賭博ゲーム』. 立東舎, May 2015 (ISBN 978-4-8456-2591-8), pp. 128-131 on bū mahjong — The only modern book source cited by ja Wikipedia ブー麻雀; it may hold the source for the 1985 prize-ban and hourly-fee statements.
  Where: NDL https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I026353160; libraries. Tried: 2026-10-07: found in NDL OpenSearch; no full text online.
• Historical 木下裕章 (former chairman, 全国麻雀業組合総連合会). 「麻雀屋からマージャン倶楽部へ」 (2012), and his article in 『麻雀界』 no. 4 (c. 2011), on the end of B-rule settlement in 1985 — First-hand industry account cited by a 2022 note.com post and by the 2011 Asami forum thread: the B rule allowed a small stake until the 1985 revision and the federation gave it up under the Metropolitan Police's 'strong guidance'.
  Where: Industry publications (日本アミューズメントサービス publishes 麻雀界); NDL holds some 麻雀界 issues as newspaper-clipping records only. Tried: 2026-10-07: NDL OpenSearch title and any= searches for 麻雀屋からマージャン倶楽部へ returned 0; 麻雀界 no. 4 not found as an issue record.
• Encyclopedia ja Wikipedia 「麻雀のルール」 history before 8 June 2009 (the three-player section that was split out into 三人麻雀) — To find when the unsourced 'free sanma parlours cannot be run in Tokyo' sentence was first added, and by whom.
  Where: https://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=麻雀のルール&action=history. Tried: 2026-10-08: Wikipedia API answered 429 (rate limit on this shared address) to the history query; not retried.
• Journalism Full page text of 『週刊読売』 1973-02-24 p.24 (公式「三人マージャン」の全魅力!), 1973-03-03 p.138, 1973-03-10 p.144 and 1973-03-31 p.42 (pids 1813820-1813825) — Only OCR snippets with the columns interleaved can be read. The full pages would settle what the 1973 'official' rule did with North, the exact Masuda (升田実) chronology (c.1944 at the Takamatsu railway bureau, post-war Tokushima, Takamatsu boom c.1962-63), the 'inventor was ex-JNR' line, and Yokota Masatoshi's Wakayama pre-war claim.
  Where: NDL Digital Collections, in-library only (permission ndl_only): https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1813820 etc.. Tried: 2026-10-07: full-text search API snippets read (about 150 probe keywords). Page images need NDL in-library access. This is the NDL's access restriction, not a technical failure.
• Rulebook 村石利夫 (Muraishi Toshio). 『麻雀101話 : 東南西北ものしり事典』. 光風社書店, 1976 (NDL R100000002-I000001304780) — Asami (his16) cites it for 'S19年頃、徳島市在住の升田実さんという人が考案した'. Need to see whether Muraishi cites Shūkan Yomiuri 1973 (he wrote in its 1973-03-31 issue).
  Where: NDL catalogue record only; no NDL Digital copy found (title searched in full text 1950-2000: only catalogue and advert mentions).. Tried: 2026-10-07: NDL OpenSearch title= and full-text keyword '麻雀101話'. Not digitised, so a library copy is needed.
• Journalism 田村光昭「雀鬼ひとり旅〈四国巡礼篇〉」『新評』22(3), 1975-03, p.90 (pid 1808011) — Gives Tokushima 1957-58 as the start; full text needed to see what Tamura was told and by whom.
  Where: NDL Digital Collections, registered-user transmission (ooc).. Tried: 2026-10-07: snippets only through the full-text search API; no login used.
• Journalism 「全国各界麻雀ルール」『週刊文春』1974-05-13 pp.150-154 (pid 3375538) and 「全調査 インフレ・マージャンまかり通る」『週刊現代』1968-06-13 pp.40-44 (pid 3371475) — Earliest full statements of the nukidora sanma rule (1974) and of Shikoku no-chii three-player (1968); only snippets were read.
  Where: NDL Digital Collections, in-library only.. Tried: 2026-10-07: snippets through the full-text search API.
• Guide sammaniax 「日本サンマ分布図」: the per-prefecture rule entries (229 in March 1999, 376 in June 2001) behind map.cgi — This was the only survey of regional sanma house rules (chii, North, characters suit, tile set) in 1999-2001, and two Japanese sources cite it.
  Where: http://www.sammaniax.com/map/map.cgi (POST form). Tried: 2026-10-07/08. Wayback CDX shows only the front page and a bare map.cgi GET (2000-03-01), whose content is the front page. The listings were POST results and were never captured. Megalodon: no capture. WARP (NDL): 'Page not found'. The domain is NXDOMAIN. The refusals are on the archives' side (nothing captured), not this side.
• Guide Hurley, japanese-mahjong.com: 3pmjother.html ('Mahjong in Japan'), 3pmjnews01-03.html (2001-2003 club diaries) and the Yaku table — They may say where and since when Hurley's group played Kansai/Chugoku-style sanma, and they complete his rules.
  Where: https://web.archive.org/web/20080212132948/http://japanese-mahjong.com:80/3pmjother.html. Tried: 2026-10-08: the fetch of 3pmjother failed on this side (SSL_ERROR_SYSCALL / connection reset to web.archive.org), then was not retried for lack of time. CDX lists the captures, so the pages exist.
• Commercial Tonpuso (mj.giganet.net) update notices for 1998 (old/planOld3.htm, 1998-05 to 1999-08) at the date the third server and its sanma tables opened — To date the start of online sanma on Tonpuso more exactly. The log shows sanma rules documented by 1998-11-12, but no opening notice was found by keyword.
  Where: https://web.archive.org/web/20000118154107/http://mj.giganet.net:80/old/planOld3.htm. Tried: 2026-10-08: read in full (41k chars) and grepped for 第3/サンマ/三人. No opening notice was found before 1999-05. The opening may be in planOld2 or in the 1998 plan.htm (captured 1998-12-06), which was not read.
• Commercial blog.tenhou.net monthly archives 2009-01 and 2009-02 — The blog's earliest months, possibly announcing sanma tournaments or lobby changes.
  Where: http://blog.tenhou.net/archives/200901-1.html. Tried: 2026-10-08: HTTP 403 from the Sakura blog server's own page ('サーバのアクセス権限がありません'), twice. Earlier months answer 404 (they do not exist). Wayback was not tried for these two pages.
• Collection archive.ph / archive.today captures of japanese-mahjong.com, sammaniax.com and mahjong.wikidot.com/rules:three-player — An independent second archive of the dead pages.
  Where: https://archive.ph/http://www.japanese-mahjong.com/3pmjintro.html. Tried: 2026-10-08: connection reset, logged by the agent proxy as ws_closed_mid_exchange to archive.ph:443 (a failure on this side or upstream, not a site refusal). archive.today and archive.is reset the same way.

WMPA / WMF 2

• Official rules Kingstone Kim, World Mahjong: Essence. World Mahjong Federation, 2007 (Sloperama gives Maekyung Publishing). 231 pp., in English. ISBN 978-89-7442-440-4; OCLC 172979207 — The federation's own book on its rules and the source Sloperama cites for the node. It may also say who Kingstone Kim is and how the WMPA became the WMF
  Where: Libraries holding OCLC 172979207; Aladin and Yes24 list it as an imported book. Tried: No hit for the ISBN in the National Library of Korea or Kyobo (2026-10-08). The Google Books API answered 429. Aladin's listing (read) has no contents or preview
• Official rules Kim Tai-Up 金太業, 『(정통 마작의 바이블) 世界麻將』. Seoul: 중앙M&B, 2002. 234 pp. ISBN 8983758015 — The WMPA rule set out in Korean by its co-president, with chapters on scoring, penalties and each hand
  Where: The National Library of Korea's digital copy, call number 691.4-3-1: https://www.nl.go.kr/NL/contents/search.do?srchTarget=total&kwd=8983758015. Tried: Contents list read 2026-10-08. The full text can be read only at the National Library of Korea and its partner libraries

Korean traditional 5

• Rulebook 박영우 (Park Young-woo). 『마작 길잡이: 한국마작의 정패(定牌)』. Seoul: BG북갤러리, 2010. ISBN 978-89-91177-94-9 (NLK KMO201014689). — Korean Wikipedia's source for the Korean game's scoring, and the only recent book found that is devoted to the 104-tile game. It should settle the player count and the bonus tiles
  Where: National Library of Korea (call number 691.48-10-1) and its digital copy; Korean libraries and second-hand booksellers. Tried: NLK catalogue search on 2026-10-09 found the record. The digital copy can be read only at the NLK and its partner libraries, which is the library's own restriction
• Historical 韓慶錫 編, 京城愛雀會 編. 『麻雀競技法』 (附朝鮮麻雀標準規定). 京城: 以文堂 / 京城愛雀會, 25 February 1931. — The earliest Korean rulebook found, with a 'standard rule of Joseon mahjong'. It would show whether play in colonial Korea already differed from the Japanese and Chinese game, for example by dropping bamboo
  Where: National Library of Korea, digitised (search 麻雀競技法 at nl.go.kr). Tried: NLK catalogue search on 2026-10-09 found the record. The digitised copy is open only at the NLK and partner libraries, which is the library's own restriction. The Dong-A notice of 5 March 1931 was read
• Rulebook 이근황 (Lee Geun-hwang). 『(한국식) 마작 교실: 초보에서 전략전술까지』 (Korean-style mahjong class). Seoul: 동신출판사, 2006. — A second book-length account of the Korean-style game, independent of Park Young-woo
  Where: Korean university and public libraries (RISS lists holdings); the National Library of Korea. Tried: RISS search on 2026-10-09 found the record only; no full text is online
• Law 관광진흥법 시행규칙 (Enforcement Rules of the Tourism Promotion Act), annexed table of casino game types, as amended from 1999 to add 마작. — The only Korean regulation found to name mahjong, which makes it legal in casinos (otherwise it falls under the gambling law). It would show which rules casino mahjong uses
  Where: Korea Law Information Center, https://www.law.go.kr/ (current and historical versions of 관광진흥법 시행규칙 and its 별표). Tried: 2026-10-09: the law page URLs failed with connection resets (curl error 35, tunnel closed mid-exchange per the proxy log). That is a failure on our side of the connection, not a refusal by the site; another network may read it at once
• Organisation 한국마작연맹 (Korea Mahjong League). Document uid=68, kml.or.kr/?page_id=12&mod=document&uid=68, summarising Korean mahjong in its own terms; and KML's 2010-06-07 competition rules. — A Korean mahjong body's own summary of the traditional game (104 tiles, no bamboo, no prevailing-wind rounds), quoted only in a Naver search snippet
  Where: https://kml.or.kr/?page_id=12&mod=document&uid=68; possibly Wayback captures of kml.or.kr. Tried: 2026-10-09: kml.or.kr answered a Cloudflare 'Just a moment' challenge (403), the site's own refusal; Wayback captures of uid=68 were not checked

Babcock rules 4

• Official rules Babcock, J. P. Rules for Mah-Jongg. Cover-title booklet, 12 p., illus., 24mo, 1920 (US copyright A 599996, 1 November 1920). — This is the 1920 first edition the node is named for. Only its text can show whether the original rules scored kongs and limit hands, and where it was printed.
  Where: The Library of Congress copyright deposit; private copies photographed at sloperama.com/cctheory/babcock.html and in the mahjongtileset.co.uk Literature Gallery 2.0; copies on the antiquarian market.. Tried: Internet Archive advanced and full-text search (2026-10-09) found only the 1923 second edition. HathiTrust's full-text search sits behind Cloudflare and was not tried by machine.
• Scholarship Heinz, Annelise. Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture. Oxford University Press, 2021; chapter 'Making a Transpacific Game', doi:10.1093/oso/9780190081799.003.0004. — The standard scholarly history of mahjong in America. It would check the dates of Babcock's editions and the companies behind them.
  Where: Oxford Academic (subscription), libraries.. Tried: Only Crossref's record was read (2026-10-09). The publisher's platform is subscription-only and was not fetched.
• Scholarship Greenfield, Mary C. 'The Game of One Hundred Intelligences: Mahjong, Materials, and the Marketing of the Asian Exotic in the 1920s.' Pacific Historical Review 79 (3), 2010, from p. 329; doi:10.1525/phr.2010.79.3.329. — A peer-reviewed history of how the Mah-Jongg companies marketed the game and its rule books.
  Where: University of California Press online, JSTOR.. Tried: Only Crossref's record was read (2026-10-09). The publisher's platform is subscription-only and was not fetched.
• Collection The Strong National Museum of Play, Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play: archival resource 246 (archives.museumofplay.org/repositories/3/resources/246). — A search result said this archive record describes a 1923 Babcock Red Book of Rules. It may describe copies or papers bearing on the editions.
  Where: https://archives.museumofplay.org/repositories/3/resources/246. Tried: Answered with a Cloudflare challenge (403) on 2026-10-09: the site's refusal. Needs a browser.

Twenty Point Mah Jong 1

• Official rules Foster, R. F. Twenty-point mah jong, with the American standard code of laws for all forms of the game. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1924 (London: John Lane, 1925) — The book the chart's source cites: Foster's full statement of the game, published 25 October 1924, which should show how far he changed the Vanity Fair version and how he credited W. F. Smith
  Where: Print; in the US public domain since 2020, so a library scan may exist on HathiTrust (LC card 24-27658). Tried: Internet Archive title and full-text search (2026-10-08) found catalogue entries, reviews and advertisements but no scan; HathiTrust's catalog API by LCCN returned no record and its catalog search answered a Cloudflare challenge (403, the site's refusal); the Google Books API and WorldCat answered 429 to the research environment's shared address

Western / British Empire style 8

• Official rules Headley, Gwyn, and Yvonne Seeley (later See). Mah-Jong (Know the Game). EP Publishing, 1978; A & C Black 1984, 1994, 2002, 2008; Bloomsbury 2019, ISBN 9781472970091. Written with and endorsed by the British Mah-Jong Association — The BMJA's own rules, called the standard rule book in Britain and the Commonwealth; it would settle the special hands, the one-chow limit, the Goulash and the tournament rules at first hand
  Where: Internet Archive lending items mahjong0000head (A & C Black, 1984) and mahjong0000unse (1994); libraries; in print from Bloomsbury. Tried: 2026-10-09: IA metadata marks both items access-restricted, and their djvu.txt files answered 403 and 401. That is IA's own lending restriction; they can be borrowed by hand with an account
• Rulebook Robertson, Max. The Game of Mah Jong. Whitcombe and Tombs, New Zealand (5th edition 1941, 24th edition 1968); Whitcoulls 1974 and 1981; Penguin NZ 2007, ISBN 9780143006596 — FAQ 3 calls it a Western-style rule book used in English-speaking countries outside North America. Its fifth edition of 1941 is the earliest dated Commonwealth Western-style rule book found, and the first edition's date is unknown
  Where: National Library of New Zealand, Trove-listed Australian libraries, second-hand booksellers. Tried: 2026-10-09: web search found only booksellers' listings; it is not on the Internet Archive. Papers Past and Trove were not reachable by script
• Rulebook Millington, A. D. The Complete Book of Mah-Jongg. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1977 (later paperbacks to 2003) — The main British rule book of the period. Wikipedia and Kajongg call it Classical Chinese and FAQ 3 calls it Classical Chinese as played in the West; reading it would show whether British play is a Western style or the 1920s Classical game, and its history chapter covers the Babcock question
  Where: Libraries; second-hand. Tried: 2026-10-09: an Internet Archive search by title and creator found no copy
• Rulebook Pritchard, D. B. Play and Win Mah-Jong. Teach Yourself, London, 2013 (descended from Teach Yourself Mahjong, 2001, revised by Gareth Saunders) — FAQ 3 says it describes the Western game, while FAQ 3's overview files it under Chinese Classical; a British rule text either way
  Where: Internet Archive lending item playwinmahjong0000prit. Tried: 2026-10-09: djvu.txt answered 401 and the item is access-restricted (IA's own lending restriction). Gareth Saunders' page on the book answered its own 403 (nginx)
• Historical The Pocket Guide to Mah Jong, Containing the Standard Laws. Thomas De La Rue & Co., London, 1924 — A British code of laws from the 1920s craze. Sloper says it, like every 1920s book except Babcock's, gives Classic Chinese rules; it would show what British play descended from
  Where: A PDF used to be on Gareth Saunders' site (garethjmsaunders.co.uk); Michael Stanwick's collection; the British Library. Tried: 2026-10-09: garethjmsaunders.co.uk answered its own 403 (nginx). A Wayback CDX search of the domain showed mah-jong posts but no PDF of the booklet among the matched URLs
• Scholarship Rep, Jelte. The Great Mahjong Book: History, Lore and Play. Tuttle, 2007 — A collector's history whose OCR snippet says the British Mah-Jong Association guards the regulations; it may date the BMJA and trace British rules
  Where: Internet Archive lending item greatmahjongbook0000repj. Tried: 2026-10-09: djvu.txt answered 401 and the item is access-restricted (IA's own lending restriction)
• Journalism The Hong Konger. Article on mahjong's growing popularity in the UK, 14 April 2025. hongkonger.world/2025/04/14/mahjong-gains-popularity-uk-cultures/ — A search summary says it claims Queen Club Rules spread across the British Empire in the 1930s. That claim is unverified and bears on the node's British Empire extent
  Where: https://hongkonger.world/2025/04/14/mahjong-gains-popularity-uk-cultures/. Tried: 2026-10-09: the site's Cloudflare returned its own block page (403, "Sorry, you have been blocked")
• Commercial Masters Traditional Games. "The Rules of Mah Jong (Mahjong)." mastersofgames.com/rules/mah-jong-rules.htm — A British games retailer's rules page that, by search summaries, gives Chinese and British versions; a further independent account of British scoring
  Where: https://www.mastersofgames.com/rules/mah-jong-rules.htm. Tried: 2026-10-09: the site answered with its own Cloudflare managed challenge (403, cf-mitigated: challenge). Not bypassed, and no archived copy was used

Wright-Patterson 7

• Official rules Wright-Patterson Mah Jongg Group / Wright-Patterson Spouses' Club. Mah Jongg: Wright-Patterson Rules (green Rules, Hands and Scoring Tables book), 2022 edition; earlier editions registered 1963, 1965 and 1970, and cited by Sloperama as 1963-1996-2003 — The only authoritative text of the rules: would settle the tile count, flowers, Charleston, the number of hands (Sloperama 70-80, Mahjong Time 92), scoring and payout, which now rest on Sloperama alone
  Where: Print only, no ISBN: mail order from Wright-Patterson OSC Mah Jongg, P.O. Box 1067, Fairborn, Ohio 45324 (checks or money orders only); older editions turn up on eBay. Tried: Open Library search (0 hits), Library of Congress books search (nothing), WorldCat (429 to the research environment), HathiTrust (Cloudflare challenge), Google Books API (429) and Internet Archive full text (no scan) on 2026-10-08
• Journalism Dayton Daily News. "Mah Jongg makes central connection." Undated — A search snippet says it reports the officers' wives' club copyrighting the rules in 1963 and quotes a Middletown, Ohio, player saying her group uses two jokers while Wright-Patterson uses none; the only newspaper account of the rules found
  Where: https://www.daytondailynews.com/lifestyles/mah-jongg-makes-central-connection/gT6bfhmz4zWEnBP7QbdpgP. Tried: curl and WebFetch on 2026-10-08 both got the site's own 404, as did the lower-case form of the link; the Wayback CDX holds no capture
• Rulebook Pritchard, D. Brine. Play and Win Mah-jong. London: Teach Yourself, 2013. ISBN 9781444197853 — Internet Archive full-text snippets show a section 'The Wright-Patterson Group' among the American styles and a further-reading entry for Wright-Patterson Rules (1963-1996-2003): an independent author's account of the rules
  Where: Internet Archive playwinmahjong0000prit (borrowable), libraries. Tried: The full-text file answered 401 (access-restricted lending item) on 2026-10-08
• Rulebook Pritchard, D. Brine. Mahjong (Teach Yourself). Hodder Headline / Contemporary Books, 2001. ISBN 0658021478 — Its further reading lists Mah-Jongg: Wright-Patterson rules (1963-1996), Wright-Patterson Mah Jongg Group; its chapter on American play (NMJL, the Charleston, AMJA) may describe the game
  Where: Internet Archive mahjong00prit (borrowable), libraries. Tried: The full-text file answered 401 (access-restricted lending item) on 2026-10-08
• Scholarship David, Lester, and Irene David. Ike and Mamie: The Story of the General and His Lady. 1981 — A full-text snippet says Mamie Eisenhower used 'the Army-wives system of mah-jongg, the Point 20 method which originated at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base': a different name for the system, and a sign of how widely it was played
  Where: Internet Archive ikemamie0000unse, bwb_0-89621-367-2 and ikemamiestoryofg0000lest (borrowable), libraries. Tried: Full-text files answered 403 and 401 (access-restricted lending items) on 2026-10-08
• Scholarship Tillery, Carolyn Quick. At Freedom's Table: More Than 200 Years of Receipts and Remembrances from Military Wives. Cumberland House, 2002. ISBN 9781581823196 — A full-text snippet reads 'When Wright Patterson was still known as McCook Field, Mah jongg players there began com-' and breaks off; a McCook Field start would be in the 1920s, well before the club's 1941
  Where: Internet Archive atfreedomstablem0000caro and atfreedomstablem0000till (borrowable), libraries. Tried: The full-text file answered 401 (access-restricted lending item) on 2026-10-08
• Organisation Jewish Museum Milwaukee. "Have Yourself a Merry Little Mah Jongg." Blog post — Search snippets say it dates the Army Air Corps wives' writing down of the rules to the 1930s and that the author's family plays from the Wright-Patterson book: another dating to set against 1941
  Where: https://jewishmuseummilwaukee.org/?p=241412. Tried: curl on 2026-10-08 got the site's own 403 Forbidden page

India / Mumbai style 3

• Guide Singh, Sushila. Rules pages of The Mumbai Style Mahjongg: 'ESWN Round The Mumbai Style Mahjongg', 'South Round Cheat Sheet', 'Any Game Score', 'Special Hand Score', 'Goulash Doubles' and 'Counting Score Card' (themumbaistylemahjongg.com, 2012-2013) — The rules of the rotating rounds as written by the Mumbai teacher Sloper names as his source, for her own players; they would show the rounds and their scoring as Mumbai set them out in 2012
  Where: Formerly at themumbaistylemahjongg.com/eswn-round-the-mumbai-style-mahjongg/ and its sibling paths, and on the mirror mahjongg.mrovaprojects.com; possibly with Sushila Singh or her players. Tried: Wayback CDX listings of both domains on 2026-10-08: only the home page and one Nepal page were captured, and the site answered the archive's crawler with 403 from October 2016. A gap in the archive, not a refusal to this reader
• Tournament rules Willingdon Sports Club, Mumbai: its mahjong tournament or house rules (the 'Willingdon' style) — The Nod (2025) says most of Mumbai and Pune play 'Willingdon', the Mumbai variation, and the club has held tournaments since at least December 2023; its written rules would be the nearest thing to a standard for the Mumbai game
  Where: Willingdon Sports Club, Mumbai (members only), or the teachers who teach there, several of whom The Nod's directory of 1 August 2025 names. Tried: Web searches for Willingdon mahjong rules on 2026-10-08 found nothing, and no club page on mahjong turned up
• Scholarship Oxfeld, Ellen. Blood, Sweat, and Mahjong: Family and Enterprise in an Overseas Chinese Community. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. ISBN 080142593X — An ethnography of the Chinese of Calcutta whose title names the game; it may say how Chinese Indians played and whether their game touched the rules other Indians play
  Where: Internet Archive, bloodsweatmahjon0000oxfe (lending only); university libraries. Tried: Internet Archive metadata read on 2026-10-08: access-restricted, borrow only, and not borrowed

Nepalese 1

• Historical Harrer, Heinrich. Return to Tibet. 1984 (English editions 1985 and 1986 on the Internet Archive) — An eyewitness account of mahjong played passionately for high stakes in old Lhasa and nearly gone by the 1980s. This is the Tibetan game that Wikipedia's Lhasa Newar article and Shakya say reached Nepal. Whether Harrer gives its hand size is unknown
  Where: https://archive.org/details/returntotibet0000harr. Tried: Found by Internet Archive full-text search on 2026-10-08. The item is lending-only, and its text file redirects to a login (302): the site's own restriction

Pusser's Bones 4

• Encyclopedia Jolly, Rick. Jackspeak: A Guide to British Naval Slang & Usage (first published 1989; later editions incl. Conway, 2011) — The standard dictionary of Royal Navy slang. Whether it glosses 'bones' as mah-jongg tiles, or mentions Pusser's Bones, would show whether the game and its name were Royal Navy usage, as the chart says, or RAN usage only
  Where: Print. Libraries, e.g. the National Museum of the Royal Navy library; Google Books. Tried: Internet Archive has only Jolly's 1998 staff-reporting spin-off (inconfidencejack0000joll). The Google Books API answered 429 for the shared project's quota, a refusal on our side (2026-10-09)
• Historical Macdonnell, J. E. Broadsides! (#41). Sydney: Horwitz, 1974 — An IA full-text hit shows this Australian naval story putting men who play mahjong on a messdeck at night, written about the time Munday learned the game (1975). It could show how mahjong and its vocabulary figured in RAN lower-deck life
  Where: https://archive.org/details/broadsides410000jema. Tried: Seen as a full-text search snippet only. The book is lending-restricted and its text file is marked private: the Internet Archive's own restriction (2026-10-09)
• Guide Weiner, Ellis, and Barbara Davilman. The Big Jewish Book for Jews. New York: Plume, 2010 — An IA full-text hit has this popular book mention 'Pussers Bones' as created by the Royal Australian Navy: a printed mention outside navy circles, whose own source (probably Wikipedia) would be worth seeing
  Where: https://archive.org/details/bigjewishbookfor0000wein. Tried: Full-text search snippet only. The text file answered 401 (lending-restricted, the Internet Archive's own restriction), 2026-10-09
• Forum BoardGameGeek. "Different versions: is the only difference the scoring?", Mahjong forum thread 1201728 — A search summary says a commenter here describes Pussers Bones as all about speed. If that comes from playing it, it would be a second hand outside Gun Plot
  Where: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1201728/different-versions-is-the-only-difference-the-scor. Tried: BoardGameGeek served a Cloudflare challenge (403), and its XML API answered 401 without a token: the site's own refusal (2026-10-09)

Regional US house rules 4

• Official rules Work, Milton C. Mah-Jongg Up-to-Date, including the American Official Laws of Mah-Jongg. Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company, 1924 (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1925) — Prints the 1924 American Code word for word as Parker Brothers approved it. Its Part II explains 'the various plans that have been tried', the rival house practices the code chose among. Only the introduction was read
  Where: Print, in the US public domain; listed in the Catalog of Copyright Entries 1925 and the National Union Catalog. Tried: Internet Archive title and full-text search (2026-10-09) found only catalogue entries and notices (Atlanta Constitution, 14 December 1924; Publishers Weekly, 8 November 1924). The HathiTrust catalog API, tried with two guessed LC card numbers, returned other books. The introduction was read through Sloperama
• Rulebook Hartman, Lee Foster. Standardized Mah Jong: A Manual of Tactics for Mixed Hands, Cleared Hands, One-Double Game. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1924; includes 'The American Code of Laws for Mah-Jongg', pp. 285-305 — The first book to print the 1924 code, with Hartman's account of the confusion before it and play for each of the three recognised forms
  Where: HathiTrust full view, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x000538491 (University of Virginia copy, public domain in the US); Google Books id 6mJLAAAAYAAJ (snippet view). Tried: HathiTrust's plain-text page answered a Cloudflare challenge (403, the site's refusal), 2026-10-09. Google Books shows snippet view only and its API answered 429 (shared daily quota)
• Scholarship Heinz, Annelise. "Performing Mahjong in the 1920s: White Women, Chinese Americans, and the Fear of Cultural Seduction." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 37, no. 1 (2016): 32-65 — The scholarly account of the 1920s craze and its end, which JSTOR Daily summarises. JSTOR Daily says it is free to read on JSTOR
  Where: Project MUSE (doi:10.1353/fro.2016.a618382); JSTOR (doi:10.5250/fronjwomestud.37.1.0032). Tried: Project MUSE redirected to its bot-verification page (the site's refusal), 2026-10-09; JSTOR not tried
• Scholarship Heinz, Annelise. Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021; especially the chapters 'The Mahjong Phenomenon' and 'The Americanization of Mahjong' — The book-length history of the game in America, covering the craze, the rival rule books and codes, and the road to the 1937 League
  Where: OUP Academic (doi:10.1093/oso/9780190081799.003.0009); print. Tried: OUP Academic answered a Cloudflare challenge (403, the site's refusal), 2026-10-09; no copy found by Internet Archive title search

NMJL card 9

• Official rules National Mah Jongg League. The earliest Official Standard Hands and Rules cards, 1937 to the 1940s. — The only direct evidence of when the first card was issued and what it held; no source read dates the first card
  Where: The League's own archive in New York; collectors such as the Mah Jongg Collectors Association; the Museum of Jewish Heritage, whose Project Mah Jongg showed early cards and rule books. Tried: Internet Archive advanced and full-text searches (2026-10-09) found no card earlier than an upload of the 2026 card; web searches found no image or description of a 1937 card
• Scholarship Heinz, Annelise. Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture. Oxford University Press, 2021. — The scholarly history of the League's founding, Viola Cecil, the Essex House meeting and the card's spread
  Where: Libraries and the publisher; in copyright. Tried: Internet Archive full-text search for "National Mah Jongg League" did not return it (2026-10-09); no open copy found
• Journalism Heinz, Annelise. "How Mahjong Became American—and Jewish." Tablet, May 2021 (title and date from search results). — Per search results, an excerpt from Heinz's book on the fall 1937 Essex House meeting called by Viola Cecil and on the first card
  Where: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/how-mahjong-became-jewish. Tried: The site answered with its own Cloudflare challenge (403) twice on 2026-10-09; read by hand
• Journalism Time. "Mahjongg history" article, time.com/6045817 (2021), cited by Grokipedia. — A historian's or journalist's account of American mahjong cited for the League's history; author not yet seen
  Where: https://time.com/6045817/mahjongg-history/. Tried: time.com answered 406 twice on 2026-10-09 (the site's refusal); the Wayback CDX query was reset on our side of the proxy
• Collection United States Copyright Office. Copyright Registration Cards 1946-1954, NATIONAL I-N drawer. Internet Archive item CopyrightCards1946-1954. — Full-text snippets show National Mah Jongg League, Inc. registrations of "Official standard hands and rules" and of a "Tenth revised edition" rule book, which would date card editions
  Where: https://archive.org/details/CopyrightCards1946-1954 (file 19461954NATIONAL_I-N). Tried: The djvu.txt and the search-text file both answered 500 from archive.org, three tries on 2026-10-09 (the site's server error)
• Historical Meyerson, Dorothy. That's It: How to Play Mahjongg with Playing Cards and Chinese Tiles. New York: National Mah Jongg League, April 1937 (title as given in Sloperama FAQ 11h). — Per Sloperama, the League's own rule book, revised yearly for at least 29 years; it may be the forerunner of, or the first form of, the annual card
  Where: Collectors; libraries through WorldCat. Tried: Internet Archive advanced search for Meyerson found nothing (2026-10-09); WorldCat not searched
• Historical Cecil, Viola L. Maajh, the American Version of the Ancient Chinese Game. 1938 (title as given in Sloperama FAQ 11h). — Written by the League's founder and first president within a year of the founding
  Where: Collectors; libraries through WorldCat. Tried: Internet Archive advanced search for Maahj and for Cecil as creator found nothing (2026-10-09)
• Rulebook Tjoa, Tong Seng. Mah Jong Unlimited: The Fundamentals of the Mah Jong Game. Pittsburgh: Dorrance, 1999. — Its full-text snippet dates the League's founding to 1938, the only conflict with 1937 found
  Where: https://archive.org/details/mahjongunlimited0000tjoa (lending only). Tried: The djvu.txt answered 401 (lending restriction, 2026-10-09)
• Organisation Museum of Jewish Heritage. "Project Mah Jongg." Exhibition page. — The originating museum's account of the exhibition the NMJL funded, which displayed early cards and rule books
  Where: https://mjhnyc.org/exhibitions/project-mah-jongg/. Tried: The site answered with its own Cloudflare challenge (403) on 2026-10-09

American mah jongg 8

• Scholarship Heinz, Annelise. Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture. Oxford University Press, 2021. ISBN 9780190081799 — The only book-length history of the American game, built on League records and oral histories. It should date the jokers and the 152-tile set and settle 1959, 1960 or 1961
  Where: Oxford University Press; libraries. Her excerpt 'How Mahjong Became Jewish' is at https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/how-mahjong-became-jewish. Tried: IA advanced search for the author found only a 2021 recorded talk, not the book (9 October 2026). The Tablet excerpt answered with a Cloudflare challenge (403), the site's refusal
• Official rules National Mah Jongg League. Mah Jongg Made Easy, the League's official rule book (revised 2020) — The governing body's full rules, including how jokers may be used and passed, would let the cross-comparison cite the League rather than retailers and encyclopedias
  Where: Sold by the NMJL through https://www.nationalmahjonggleague.org/store.aspx. Tried: The only online copy found is a private Internet Archive upload (mah-jongg-made-easy) that appears unauthorised. It was not opened, per CONVENTIONS' rule on the League's publications. A copy bought or borrowed in print is needed
• Tournament rules Mah Jongg Madness. Standardized National Mah Jongg Tournament Rules (codified 2005) — The tournament code for the American game that Wikipedia cites, and the only tournament-rules text for this node
  Where: https://mahjongg.org/rules/ ; Wayback capture of 17 June 2022 cited by Wikipedia. Tried: The live page answered with a Cloudflare block page (403), the site's refusal (9 October 2026). The Wayback capture was not tried, because web.archive.org connections were being reset on our side that day
• Historical Goren, Charles H. Goren's Hoyle Encyclopedia of Games. New York: Greystone Press, 1961. Mah Jongg section — A general games reference revised in the joker years. It would show whether American jokers had reached a 1961 account of the game, though IA's full-text hits suggest the section repeats Culbertson's Hoyle of 1950
  Where: https://archive.org/details/gorenshoyleencyc00gore. Tried: Lending-only on the Internet Archive (access-restricted), so the full text cannot be downloaded (IA's restriction, 9 October 2026)
• Journalism Ms. magazine, vol. 5 (apparently January 1977): an article on mothers' mah-jongg — A full-text hit reads 'the addition of jokers several years ago, the manufacturers of Mah-Jongg sets must comply', a second period witness to the jokers
  Where: https://archive.org/details/ms05janmsfo. Tried: Lending-only; the text download answered 401 (IA's restriction, 9 October 2026)
• Rulebook Sandberg, Elaine. A Beginner's Guide to American Mah Jongg. Tuttle, 2007; and Mah Jongg for Fun, Yellow Mountain Imports, 2010 — A rule book by the author Wikipedia cites for the annual card and the NMJL and AMJA cards
  Where: https://archive.org/details/beginnersguideto0000sand ; Mah Jongg for Fun in print only. Tried: The 2007 book is lending-only on the Internet Archive (access-restricted). The 2010 book was not found online (9 October 2026)
• Guide "The History of Mahjong." mahjonged.com, as captured on 15 August 2010 — Wikipedia's only source for its claim that the NMJL published 'Official American Rules' in 1935, two years before the League's own founding date
  Where: https://web.archive.org/web/20100815091830/http://www.mahjonged.com/mahjong_history.html. Tried: The id_ capture failed with connection reset six times. The proxy reported the tunnel closing mid-exchange, a failure on our side. The live site answered 406 (9 October 2026)
• Collection The Strong National Museum of Play, Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play: Mahjong Oral History Collection (Annelise Heinz's interviews, 2011-2017) — Players' recollections of postwar play, and the archive record behind Heinz's book. They may say when jokers reached home games
  Where: https://archives.museumofplay.org/repositories/3/resources/246 ; recordings through the museum's Preservica portal. Tried: The archives page answered with a Cloudflare challenge (403), the site's refusal. The finding-aid PDF was read but describes only the series, not the content of the interviews (9 October 2026)

AMJA card 7

• Organisation American Mah-Jongg Association, official website, www.amja.net, including amja.net/tournaments.htm — The AMJA's own account of its founding, officers, card, rules and events. It is also the only way to learn whether it still issued a card after 2013 and when it stopped
  Where: Wayback Machine captures of amja.net dated 24 January 2003, 21 January 2009 and 28 November 2025 (per the archive.org availability API); the live site at https://www.amja.net/. Tried: On 2026-10-09 the live site presented a TLS certificate valid 7 November to 9 December 2025. That expiry is the site's side, and the site was not fetched unverified. Every connection to web.archive.org, both CDX and captures, was reset in the agent proxy relay over about 20 attempts. That failure is on our side, so a reader on another network may get through. WebFetch refuses web.archive.org, and archive.today and the Common Crawl index were also reset on our side
• Official rules An AMJA annual card, any year (for example 2000, 2004, 2010 or 2013) — The card is the AMJA's rules text: its hands, values and printed rule notes, such as the dragon-matching wording of 2010 and the mandated jokers of 2013
  Where: The AMJA while it sold cards; collectors; Tom Sloper, who photographs one in FAQ 7i. The 2000 card's hands also exist as the software card file 2000.crd in Shanghai: Second Dynasty. Tried: Internet Archive full-text search for both spellings (2026-10-09) found no digitised card. Web searches found none
• Rulebook Pritchard, D. Brine. Mahjong (Teach Yourself). Hodder Headline / Contemporary Books, 2001; and Play and Win Mah-jong. Teach Yourself, 2013 — Has a section 'The American Mah-Jongg Association' (contents p. 108). Snippets give the AMJA as formed in 1999 (2013 edition), its address as 1330 Reisterstown Road (2001) and 8605 Snowreath Road, Baltimore MD 21208 (2013), and list the AMJA annual card
  Where: Internet Archive lending items mahjong00prit and playwinmahjong0000prit; libraries. Tried: The djvu text answered HTTP 401 on 2026-10-09. These are borrow-only items, a decision by the site that needs a logged-in loan. Only full-text search snippets were seen
• Encyclopedia Encyclopedia of Play in Today's Society. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2009. Entry on mahjong — A snippet says there has been a resurgence with the American Mah-Jongg Association, formed in 1999, and its bibliography cites www.amja.net (cited June 2008)
  Where: Internet Archive lending item encyclopediaofpl0000unse; libraries. Tried: The djvu text answered HTTP 401 on 2026-10-09 (borrow-only, the site's decision)
• Rulebook Sandberg, Elaine. A Beginner's Guide to American Mah Jongg. Tuttle, 2007; and Mah Jongg for Fun. Yellow Mountain Imports, 2010 — Wikipedia cites Mah Jongg for Fun, p. 4, for the AMJA card. Snippets of the 2007 guide give the AMJA's address (8605 Snowreath Road) and say other bodies publish their own cards, such as the AMJA. The Way Public Library's 1999 date appears to come from it
  Where: Internet Archive lending item beginnersguideto0000sand; libraries. Tried: The djvu text answered HTTP 401 on 2026-10-09 (borrow-only, the site's decision). Mah Jongg for Fun was not looked for further
• Rulebook Sloper, Tom. The Red Dragon & The West Wind. HarperCollins (William Morrow), 2007 — Written by the AMJA card's editor of those years and described by him as the most comprehensive book on the American game, so it is likely to describe the AMJA and its card
  Where: Libraries; booksellers. Tried: An Internet Archive advanced search by title and author (2026-10-09) found no copy
• Commercial Winning Moves. 'Winning Moves Introduces Mah Jongg Card Game.' Press release, GlobeNewswire, 31 January 2012 — Quotes Lois Madow as president of the American Mah Jongg Association, apparently endorsing the game, and dates the AMJA's activity to 2012
  Where: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2012/01/31/466698/16029/en/Winning-Moves-Introduces-Mah-Jongg-Card-Game.html. Tried: On 2026-10-09 the HTTP/2 request ended with a stream INTERNAL_ERROR and the HTTP/1.1 retry got an empty reply. It is unclear whether this was the site refusing an automated reader or a failure on our side

Siamese Mah Jongg 3

• Official rules Grad, Gladys. Siamese Mah Jongg rules page, https://mahjongg.org/siamese-rules/ (siamesemahjongg.com redirects to mahjongg.org) — The designer's own rules and scoring, and in substance the chart's canonical source. It would settle the deal, the early Mah Jongg rule, the scoring, and when the rules were first published
  Where: https://mahjongg.org/siamese-rules/ and its Wayback Machine captures. Tried: 2026-10-09: the live site (and siamesemahjongg.com, which redirects to it) answered curl and WebFetch with its own Cloudflare block page (HTTP 403), so this is the site's refusal. The Wayback CDX API and an id_ capture URL failed about 20 times between 12:22 and 12:40 UTC with connection resets in the proxy tunnel, and archive.ph also reset. Those failures were on our side, so someone on another network may be able to read the captures
• Official rules Grad, Gladys. Siamese Mah Jongg card, issued each January (editions of 2024, 2025 and 2026 at least) — The game's own hands and scoring. The first edition would date when Siamese stopped relying on the NMJL card
  Where: Sold through mahjongg.org; I Love Mahj implements the 2024-2026 cards. Tried: No image or text of any edition found by web search on 2026-10-09; mahjongg.org refuses automated readers (Cloudflare 403)
• Rulebook Swain, Gregg, and Toby Salk. American Mah Jongg for Everyone: The Complete Beginner's Guide. Tuttle Publishing, 2020 (ISBN 9780804852470), with a foreword and a chapter on the rules of Siamese Mah Jongg by Gladys Grad — The only printed statement of the rules known, written by the designer
  Where: In print and as a library e-book (OverDrive). Tried: Tuttle's product page was read on 2026-10-09 and confirms the chapter. The book is not on the Internet Archive (title search, 0 hits) and is in copyright