Domino is a game of matching pictures, letters, numbers, or sets. It is a fun activity for all ages and can be used in an educational ot therapy setting. It can help children with autism practice the names of people or places they have seen and experienced. It can also be used to encourage social interaction.
When playing domino, the tiles are arranged in a pile or stack face down on the table. This pile is called the stock or boneyard. Each player draws a number of tiles for his hand, depending on the rules of the particular game being played. Some games allow players to draw more than they are allowed, which is known as an overdraw. If an overdraw is discovered, the extra tiles are returned to the stock and reshuffled before the next player draws his hand.
The basic rules of domino are the same for all games, but there are many variations in how the tiles are used and scored. The most common set is a double-six, with 28 tiles. Other types of domino sets include a double-twelve (91 tiles), a double-nine (55 tiles), and a double-15, which has 136 pieces.
Most domino games involve building lines of tiles on the table by matching the pips on the open ends of the pieces. The first player to complete his line wins the game. Players may score points by counting the number of pips left in the losers’ hands at the end of a hand or the game, or they may use a scoring method that counts only one side of a double.
While the game has been around for centuries, its real potential was demonstrated by University of British Columbia physics professor Loren Whitehead in 1983. In a video, Whitehead showed that a set of 13 dominoes could knock over objects that were one-and-a-half times larger than the dominoes themselves.
In addition to blocking and scoring, dominoes can be used for puzzle-solving, chess, and other games. The game has been adapted into a wide variety of films, television shows, and books. It is popular with school-age children and is often taught in schools to promote critical thinking skills.
When writing fiction, domino can be a useful metaphor for the way scenes work together to move the story forward. Using the example of dominoes, if your scenes don’t connect logically or emotionally, they won’t add up to the tension you’re striving for. Like the unmoving dominoes, your scene should have enough impact to cause the emotional beats of the scenes ahead of it to shift. This can be done by examining your scenes to see whether they are at the right angle and have enough logical impact on the scenes before them. This is a difficult task for pantsers, who don’t plot out their scenes ahead of time, but it can be done with tools such as Scrivener and by writing scene cards.