Dominoes are black and white rectangular blocks used as gaming pieces that can be lined up in long rows to fall over one another. They can also be arranged in other ways, such as diagonally or in a circle, to create patterns. Some people also use them to make sculptures or art pieces. Today’s Wonder of the Day explores how dominoes are used in everyday life.

Some people like to line up their dominoes and knock them over. Other people enjoy playing games with them. Still others use them to build intricate structures. And some like to compete in domino shows, where builders set up complicated and imaginative domino displays before an audience of fans.

The most common set of dominoes, called a double-six set, contains 28 tiles. Larger sets, which are commonly used for games involving more than one player, can have as many as 55 tiles. The most popular type of domino game is a layout game.

In a layout game, each domino has an identifying mark, called a pip, on one side and is blank or identically patterned on the other. A domino can be matched only with another domino that has the same number of pips on its blank or matching sides. Most dominoes are divided into suits that represent specific numbers; each tile belongs to a suit. For example, a two-pip domino is a member of the threes suit; a six-pip domino is a members of the sevens suit. The most common dominoes are also divided into a number of “wild” or unmatched sides, such as the fours, eights, and nines, that can be played as they are.

Dominoes are normally twice as long as they are wide, so that they can be stacked on top of each other to form a continuous row. This allows for more than one player and a variety of game options, including blockage games where players try to prevent their opponents from playing a tile that will lead to a chain reaction.

A domino is a small square block of wood, ivory, or plastic, bearing an arrangement of dots, called pips, on one face and blank or identically patterned on the other. The pips are usually arranged in pairs, with the two leftmost pips being labeled 1 and the two rightmost pips being 2. Each domino is marked on its blank or wild side with a number from one to twelve. Some sets have only a single number, while others have several numbers and even a zero.

In business, the term domino may refer to a system of influence in which one person or organization causes a change in another, often leading to similar effects in other areas. For example, a domino effect may be caused by a customer’s complaint about the quality of a product, which could result in the company taking steps to improve its quality. Alternatively, the phrase may be used to describe a chain reaction in a computer system, in which one piece of software can trigger changes in other programs.