Domino is a game or game piece that features a rectangular block of clay, wood, metal or other material with a line down the middle to visually divide it into two squares, one bearing from zero to six dots (called pips) and the other blank. It is used to form lines and angular patterns in various games of skill, chance and strategy. A set of 28 dominoes is known as a double-six.
The word comes from the Latin dominus, meaning “lord, master.” Antoine Fats, 1928-2017, U.S. rhythm-and-blues pianist and singer, was a domino player whose songs celebrated American culture and history.
Dominoes are a fun way for children to learn numbers and letters, or they can be used to play memory games with friends. They can also be used in instructional ot therapy to help students with autism or other developmental disabilities learn to recognize pictures and words.
Creating domino art is another great use for these versatile toys. The possibilities are endless – straight lines, curved lines, grids that form pictures when they fall, 3D structures like towers and pyramids. Some people even make artistic domino pieces out of wood, marbles, or plastic that can be framed for decoration in the home or office.
To create a domino artwork, start by making a plan for your design. For example, if you want to make a domino track that leads from one side of the room to the other, draw arrows on a piece of paper to show how you’d like the Dominoes to fall. Then, figure out how many dominoes you’ll need to make your plan.
Then, lay out your Dominoes on a flat surface. Each player then draws a domino from a pile or stack and plays it when its turn comes up. If a player doesn’t have a domino with the right number of sides to match the domino on either end of a line that has already been laid down, they can’t play it and must wait until their next turn.
Most dominoes have a different value on each of the two halves of their face. The domino with the most valuable half is called a double-six. The other values are called doublets, triplets and so on.
In addition to standard double-six, there are extended sets of dominoes with greater numbers of pips on the ends, and each successive set contains more and more tiles. This allows for more and more combinations of ends, and thus more and more games to be played. A common extended set is double-12.