h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dominoes are game pieces that are rectangular shapes, divided in half by a line either carved or painted across the center to give two squares. On the face of these squares are either carved or painted dots representing the numbers one through six in the classic sense. In a double six set, there
will be thrown in blank
faces, which I guess should be called double
sevens, even though they
are still refered to as
double sixes.

Dominoes are believed to be a creation of the
chinese, where they took
the number game concept
from dice and flattened
them out into these tiles that are now known all
over the world in different incarnations.

Just like cards or dice you can play various different kinds of games
with dominoes. At it's most basic form, you divy up seven tiles to each player, and you try to match numbers from your "hand" onto a starter tile in the middle of the table, or floor, or
wherever your playing
surface of choice is. All the remaining tiles are elsewhere on the table surface in a group called the boneyard. As you play a tile from your hand, you must pick up a
tile from the boneyard.
This of course means the
tiles are called bones,
(in some circles). You play until all the tiles
possible have been
played. Any tiles left in an opponents hand are added up and those points are given to the player
with no or the least amount of tiles remaining in his hand.

For those bored with the double-six set, there are now double-nine,
double-twelve and then a
set that incorporates a
"wild" card tile that
really mixes things up.
The variations of games
from this can be just as
various as the dice games or card games. Enough to satisfy all people from the gambler to the sunday afternoon family gamers.