What is Domino?

Dominoes are rectangular pieces of material bearing a pattern of spots or numbers, like those on a die, on one side and blank or identically patterned on the other. The domino set consists of a number of these tiles in a variety of shapes and sizes, typically with a matching set of pawns. The tiles are arranged in a line or other formation to form a game board. There are many games played with dominoes, most of which are positional. In these games, a domino placed edge to edge with another domino in a row forms some specified total, or a chain of numbers.

The most basic domino variant requires a double-six set, from which each player draws seven tiles from the boneyard (or stock). These are placed on-edge, so players can see their own value, but not the values of their opponents’ tiles. The first player plays a domino on the table, which starts the line of play. Each player then extends this line by placing a tile of the same value at one end of it. The first player to play all of their tiles wins the hand. A tie may be broken by drawing new hands if no one has the highest double, or by counting the pips remaining in the losing players’ hands at the end of the game.

Many domino fans enjoy creating elaborate displays. These may be as simple as a single straight line of dominoes, or as complicated as a grid that forms pictures when the dominoes fall, or walls, or 3-D structures such as towers and pyramids. Artists such as the renowned Jennifer Hevesh create these arrangements for movies, TV shows, and events, and helped set a Guinness World Record by toppling a circular arrangement of 76,017 dominoes that took several nail-biting minutes to fall.

The word “domino” is also used in fiction to refer to the domino effect, which occurs when a scene in a story naturally influences the scenes that follow it. A domino effect can be positive or negative, but it must logically connect to the previous scene and advance the narrative.

In writing, a domino can be each scene to illustrate a point of view or an argument. These scenes, however, must logically progress and shift as the emotional beats of the story dictate they should. Otherwise, the domino effect is ineffective and boring.