Dominoes are cousins of playing cards and dice, allowing a wide variety of games to be played. Using a set, players place domino pieces side-by-side or on top of each other to create patterns and knock them over. Some of the most popular domino games involve scoring by counting the number of pips on each end of a domino, while others use blocking and drawing games to build chains of matching dominoes and win.

Lily Hevesh started collecting dominoes when she was 9 years old. Her grandparents had the classic 28-piece set, and she loved setting them up in straight or curved lines, flicking one to start the chain, then watching it fall, piece by piece. She has since grown into a professional domino artist, working on projects that range from creating giant rainbow spirals to building intricate tracks that take several nail-biting minutes to fall.

Hevesh uses domino to express her creativity, and her designs have inspired other artists and designers to use the medium in their work. She often starts a design by considering the theme or purpose of an installation. Then she brainstorms images and words that might be reflected in the design, and calculates how many dominoes are needed for the project.

She also considers the forces that will affect the dominoes, such as gravity and friction. When she’s done planning out the domino art, she draws a diagram of the track that she will use to guide the pieces as they fall. This is an important step, as the track can be a crucial element in a creation’s success.

In the United States, the most basic dominoes are numbered from zero to nine and have matching pips on each end. The numbers on the sides of a domino indicate what suit it belongs to, such as spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds. Some sets also include a double, which has the same number of pips on each half face and can belong to either suit.

The most common Western domino games are block-and-draw games, in which each player tries to empty their hand without losing all the dominoes they have placed on the table. A player wins a game by having the fewest dominoes remaining when their opponent has no more moves.

A common strategy in these games is to block opponents by placing a domino next to an already-placed tile that is of a different suit, thus stopping them from scoring points. The most common blocking games are bergen and muggins, while other scoring games include dominoes and threes, and the simple fives-and-threes.

In some countries, dominoes are used to teach children the basics of number recognition and counting. They can even be used to help students learn the alphabet and the names of animals and colors. In some schools, dominoes are used to teach the history of the world and the elements of science. Other school projects have used dominoes to learn about engineering and architecture, or as a way to express emotions like anger or frustration.