China's tiles came first, but France launched modern dominoes
Dominoes are first mentioned in Song-dynasty China by Zhou Mi (1232–1298), yet the European game appeared in mid-18th-century France with no confirmed link to the Chinese one. Its name probably comes from a Venetian carnival costume of black hood and white mask, and the classic double-six set holds 28 tiles.
Chinese sets differ at the root. Each of their 32 tiles stands for one of the 21 possible throws of two dice, so there are no blanks, some throws are duplicated, and tiles split into military and civil suits. Michael Dummett noted that Chinese games care only about a tile's identity, with no idea of matching ends. The earliest likely reference lists gambling plaques sold by Hangzhou peddlers in the reign of Emperor Xiaozong, who ruled from 1162 to 1189, and a manual attributed to Qu You may be a later forgery.
The word domino first appears in print in a French magazine on 1 April 1762 and in a dictionary in 1771. It earlier named a priest's hooded garment and masquerade costume, and the double-one tile resembles the mask. The game spread quickly to Britain, Austria, southern Germany and Italy, reaching England by the late 1700s, reputedly via French prisoners of war. In 1863 All Fives borrowed cribbage scoring and used a cribbage board, and Muggins appeared the next year; the two names have been muddled since about 1871. An 1889 account called the game most popular in the cafés of France and Belgium.
A standard set arranges spots as on dice but adds blanks, giving seven possible ends and 28 unique tiles. Extended sets step up by three spots each time, from double-nine with 55 tiles to double-18 with 190, and the biggest sometimes print numerals instead of pips. Classic sets were bone, ivory or ebony with inlaid spots; modern ones are usually plastic or Bakelite, sometimes with a metal spinner at the centre.
Dominoes remain a Caribbean institution, and Alabama banned Sunday play until 2015.
Source: Dominoes
