Domino is a family of game pieces, cousins to playing cards, that are used for a wide variety of games and tests of skill. Each domino has identifying marks on one side and is blank or identically patterned on the other. The identifying marks, or “pips,” are arranged in a pattern similar to that of the spots on a die, with some squares marked blank (indicated in this listing by a zero).

Dominoes come in different shapes and sizes, and they can be set up in many configurations to create amazing structures. One of the best known domino artists is a woman named Hevesh, who has devoted her life to creating intricate setups. Hevesh has set records for the most dominoes toppled in a circle and works on projects involving hundreds of thousands of dominoes.

Hevesh’s setups can take several nail-biting minutes for the final domino to fall, but even before that happens each piece has potential energy stored in it. That energy builds as she adds more and more pieces to the structure until a slight nudge is all it takes to release that potential and bring the display crashing down.

When it comes to learning, a domino can be a powerful analogy for how some students may be forced to compensate for their challenges. As they continue to rely on these compensatory skills, they can become overwhelmed and start to struggle academically. These struggles can lead to frustration, which in turn can cause students to stop trying. This cycle can spiral out of control, affecting the entire class and making it harder for them to learn.

The most basic domino game involves two players and requires a double-six set of 28 tiles. The tiles are shuffled and then placed on-edge in front of the players, where they can see their own. Each player draws seven tiles from the stock, or boneyard. They then play a tile on top of an existing domino and try to score points by matching the values of adjacent ends. For example, if a tile has a value of five and the other end has a value of three, the player scores one point each time the exposed ends are multiples of five.

To make this game more challenging, players must also try to block their opponents from scoring by preventing them from connecting additional ends. This is done by placing a domino from their hand touching the exposed ends of the previous tile. In most cases, only the ends with the same number of pips match; if a tile has four pips on one end and six pips on the other, for instance, it cannot be connected to the five-and-three end. This process continues until either a single player wins by playing all their tiles or no more of the opponent’s tiles can be played.