Episode 5 - You Did What? Cracking the Code on the NMJL card

Here's a sentence that clarifies the entire situation for me.

Nowhere does the line or the section say any three odd numbers.

That is the difference.

The card did not present all of the odd numbers as one big pool and invite the player to select three.

It presented two complete alternatives, 135 or 579.

That little word OR is not decorative.

It is an instruction.

Choose this complete option or choose that complete option.

It does not mean take three from this side, the five they happen to share, and the five from the other side and create a brand new third version.

The card gave me two choices.

Jenny created a third.

And I used the word created intentionally.

Jenny is an artist by trade.

She naturally sees possibilities, combinations, and interpretations that the rest of us may not see.

So perhaps this wasn't a failure to read the card.

Perhaps it was an artistic reimagining of the card.

She looked at 135 and 579 and apparently saw an invitation to create something new.

Unfortunately, the National Mahjong League card is one place where artistic license does not extend to the number.

Creativity is enormously valuable at the Mahjong table.

It helps us recognize possibilities, pivot when the tiles aren't cooperating, and discover another direction.

But creativity cannot turn a pattern that is neither printed nor permitted into a valid Mahjong.

So I genuinely appreciate her interpretation.

357 was imaginative.

It just wouldn't have been Mahjong, at least not yet.