Another interesting question and informative answer from

Gladys Grad‘s Mah Jongg Madness newsletter…

Q. I have been playing for over 40 years and just love this game.  My friends are all experienced players and we live in Canada. This week during a game, I had one exposure and no other player was exposed.  The last tile from the wall was picked by a player opposite of me and she put it in her rack.  She then took a tile from her rack,  discarded it , but did not name it.  I was just about to say mah jongg when she picked it up from the table and put it back in her rack, and replaced it with another tile.  The fact that she did not say what the tile was, does this make this move okay?I think that she should not have taken the tile from the table because it was discarded  But she feels that because she did not name it, that it was okay.  Was it okay? Sheila

A. Your opponent did you wrong.  First, once a tile has been placed on the table – or named….it is considered discarded.  No-take-backs.  The National Mah Jongg League says “Down-is-Down.”  Further, once Mah Jongg has been declared…that ends the game.  It doesn’t matter that this was the last tile.  Would she expect to retrieve a tile she threw to someone in the middle of a game, so it wouldn’t give her opponent mahj?