Domino is a game played with small rectangular blocks of wood or plastic, each bearing an arrangement of dots resembling those on dice. The domino set is typically 28 in number, and the tiles are arranged into two rows and a stock, or boneyard. Players draw tiles from the stock to form their hands and then place them on a table in front of them, facing one another. Each player must then, in turn, play a tile so that it touches an open end of a previous domino in the line of play and forms a chain that increases in length. The configuration of the lines of play, which may be long or short and in any direction, is called the layout, string or line of play.
The game is usually played with the entire set of dominoes in play, although some games only require a subset of them. The most basic of these is called double-six. When a player draws more than the number of tiles required for his hand, these extra tiles are taken out of the stock and placed on the side without showing them to the other players. This allows the player to keep track of the total value of his opponent’s remaining tiles and to know which tiles remain in the losers’ hands at the end of a hand or game.
Besides the basic blocking and scoring games, domino also lends itself to more intricate setups, some of which are spectacular. A domino artist can use a single domino to create a pattern, or she can build a large, multi-layered sculpture with them. She can even set a domino in motion by lining them up and then letting them fall according to the laws of physics.
Hevesh started building domino projects when she was a child, and she has gone on to become a professional. She has built installations that have involved more than 300,000 dominoes and has worked on team projects for movies and events including the album launch for Katy Perry. She is known for creating stunning domino structures that take several nail-biting minutes to topple.
Dominoes are most often made of a material that is easily worked and affordable, such as wood or polymer, but they have also been constructed from stone (like marble, granite and soapstone); other types of natural stone; metals; ceramic clay; or frosted glass. In addition, the dominoes can be painted or engraved. A set of dominoes can be a valuable collector’s item.
In most domino games, a tile is said to match when its two adjacent faces contain identical or similar arrangements of pips and the total of the pips in the two matching tiles is the same. A domino is said to be “stitched up” if the ends of the tiles show the same number, as in the case of a 4-4-0, which counts as four points in the losing players’ hands. This scoring method is not used in all games, but is commonly employed by players in tournaments.