All of a sudden, mahjong is everywhere.

Mahjong is a game played with tiles that are larger than Scrabble tiles but smaller than dominoes. It was invented in China in 1848, according to one book. It came to America in the 1920s and had a resurgence in popularity in the 1950s, especially among Jewish women.

As those Jewish women began to die out, so did the game's popularity in this country.

Now, in a trend that no one expected, it is back. And it is big.

"Nowadays, a lot more Christian women are playing, and even men. It's really changed in the last five years. Now everybody seems to play," says Nettie Silverstein, 72, of Chesterfield. She has been playing for more than 40 years.

The National Mah Jongg League, which was founded in 1937 as a way of standardizing rules for Americans, cu

See Full Page