You may have played domino, or watched someone else play a domino game. You might even have a set at home. But have you ever wondered about the history of this fascinating and versatile tile-based game? This article will give you a brief history of domino, as well as a look at how one of the most popular games works. You’ll also learn how a domino is able to create amazing artwork and portraits.
A domino is a small rectangular wood or plastic block with an arrangement of spots, or “pips,” like those on dice on its face. The dots are usually painted in bright colors and contrast with the blank or identically patterned side of the domino. There are 28 such tiles in a standard domino set. The word domino is also used to describe any of the various games played with these tiles, in which a line or angular pattern of the pieces is formed either by matching the ends of adjacent pieces or by placing them together in lines of play.
Dominoes can be used to form a variety of patterns, including straight lines, curved lines, grids that make pictures when they fall, or 3-D structures such as towers and pyramids. Creating these designs requires careful planning and execution. Hevesh, a professional domino artist with millions of YouTube subscribers, uses a process similar to an engineering design plan when she’s working on an intricate domino setup.
The most common domino games involve two players, each of whom has seven tiles in his or her hand at all times. The tiles are arranged in a square called the stock or boneyard, and each player draws seven from it to begin playing his or her turns. The first player to have all of his or her tiles played wins the game. The other players score points according to the rules of the specific game. For example, a player may decide that winning means counting all the pips left in his or her opponent’s hands after the losing player plays a double and the player to his or her right does the same, but scoring rules vary by game.
Another way to win is by making the last tile a double. This allows the winner to count all the pips on the two matches of the other players’ tiles and then adding the number of pips on the single tile that he or she played. These scores are usually tallied at the end of the hand or game.
A domino effect is any chain reaction that leads from a single event to a series of consequences. For example, if one country falls to Communism, other small countries nearby are more likely to follow suit. This idiom, which is an example of a cognitive figurative language, dates to the Cold War when Joseph Alsop wrote about the theory that once one country in Asia or Europe succumbed to Communism, it would spread from there like a falling domino.