Domino is a tile-based game with many variations in rules and scoring. The most commonly available sets have 28 tiles but larger ones can be found for games that require a longer domino chain. The most common types of domino games are blocking and scoring.
Domino games are very popular around the world and are played in many different ways. Some of them are used to teach children numbers and letters. Dominoes are also used in therapy and educational activities to help people with cognitive skills, such as planning and organizational abilities.
A domino is a flat, thumbsized rectangular block with one to six pips or dots on each side and a blank on the other. A complete set of dominoes has 28 such pieces and may be stacked on their ends in lines or angular patterns. They can be used to play various games, such as drawing and the draw game in which players place dominoes on the table and then draw tiles from a box and place them on top of the first domino.
If the exposed ends of two adjacent dominoes match (a one’s touch a one’s, a two’s touch a two’s, and so on), that is called a “cross.” The total number of points shown on these two adjacent end tiles is awarded to the player. Other scoring methods involve a domino being positioned so that the pips or spots on one face are touching those of another, which is known as “stitching up” the ends.
Most domino games are designed to be played between two or more players and are usually based on skill, chance, strategy, and luck. They are often adaptations of card games and were once popular in some areas as a way to circumvent religious prohibitions against playing cards. Some of these games are also adaptations of other types of games, such as solitaire or trick-taking.
Many people enjoy arranging dominoes on the floor in long lines. Each domino can be tipped to cause it to tip the next tile in line, and so on. This is sometimes referred to as the domino effect and can be used to create very complex designs.
In writing, a domino can refer to an important scene in a story that has the potential to affect everything else that comes before it. This is a good opportunity to check that the scenes you’ve written connect logically and build on each other.
The term “domino” also means a powerful person or influence. For example, a single person might be able to have a domino effect on the economy or politics. In a movie, a character’s domino effect might be to tip over other characters and cause them to follow suit.