Domino is a game in which players place domino pieces on a line to form a chain. The first tile to topple over starts the chain, which can continue until all the tiles are knocked over. The term domino can also refer to an occurrence in which one small event causes similar events, leading to disaster. For example, the driver of a Domino’s pizza delivery van who sped through a stop sign in Ypsilanti, Michigan, created a chain reaction that ended with him being pulled over and arrested for DUI.
The most common use of the word domino is for a game in which players place individual dominoes in a row, and each player takes turns placing dominoes, adding them edge to edge in such a way that all open ends (aside from doubles) match up with each other. The number of matching ends on the two adjacent sides of the domino is its value. The highest value domino is a double-six, and the lowest value is a double-blank. The total of the values of all the tiles on the board is a player’s score, with a high score winning the game.
Each domino features a line in the center to divide it visually into two squares, called ends. The value of each end is the number of dots or pips that it displays, and the number of pips on a domino is sometimes referred to as its rank or weight. A domino that has more pips is generally “heavier” than a domino with fewer pips, although the exact ranking of a particular piece may depend on the rules of a specific game.
A domino set is normally twice as long as it is wide, with each side of the tile featuring a grid of pips. In some games, the pips are colored to distinguish the different types of dominoes. For instance, red dominoes have all five pips on each side and white dominoes have one. Some sets also feature blank sides, which are not used for scoring and serve only to mark a domino as having been played.
The domino game was invented by a Californian named Charles Densmore in 1892, and Domino’s Pizza opened its first franchise in 1967, in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The company’s strategy was to put its pizzerias near college campuses, because they attracted a large number of young people who wanted quick and easy food.
In a game of domino, a player wins by being the first to play all of his or her dominoes. To begin, the first player picks a domino from the stock and places it at the edge of an existing row. The next player then plays a domino to the left or right of that initial tile, and so on. Each new domino must touch the ends of the previous tile, and if it’s a double, it must be placed cross-ways so that the two matching sides are touching.